Reclaiming SJW

[Thaluikhain]

Murder and suicide disproportionately affect men, that doesn't make them MRA issues.

Only because MRAs aren't interested in men's rights.

For the people who actually do care about men, those are very big deals, though suicide rather more than murder, usually.

If someone were to assume that, because I am a white male, that I've never faced significant racial discrimination, and thus hit me with the "check your privilege" stick, they have engaged in a bit of racism. They are making a presumption about me personally based on nothing more than their assumptions about my life based on my race.

They are probably correct in guessing that you've not experienced racism due to you being a PoC if you aren't a PoC. Which would work differently than racism you've experienced as a white person.

 

[Gorrath]

Murder and suicide disproportionately affect men, that doesn't make them MRA issues.

Only because MRAs aren't interested in men's rights.

For the people who actually do care about men, those are very big deals, though suicide rather more than murder, usually.

If someone were to assume that, because I am a white male, that I've never faced significant racial discrimination, and thus hit me with the "check your privilege" stick, they have engaged in a bit of racism. They are making a presumption about me personally based on nothing more than their assumptions about my life based on my race.

They are probably correct in guessing that you've not experienced racism due to you being a PoC if you aren't a PoC. Which would work differently than racism you've experienced as a white person.

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by your phrasing here. By "PoC" you mean person of color I presume? Someone being "probably correct" in assuming things about me because of my race is exactly the problem. I am often told that the racism I experienced due to the way my young life played out somehow totally doesn't count because I'm white, but needless to say, I don't agree. There are differences in the way two people of color might experience racism, and it doesn't invalidate either's experiences. To say that mine is invalidated by me being white is racism unto itself (not saying you said this, it is just a sentiment I often come across.) I'm not sure if I'm forming a coherent point though as I don't know if I came anywhere close to discerning the meaning of your post.

 

[Gennadios]

I heard SJW 5 times in my life.

The first was last week when somebody posted about burning out on being an SJW.

The other 4 times was when I was reading other sites about the convention disaster.

I'm beginning to worry about the tumblrites that DO stumble in here. Go back, fight for social justice somewhere else, please.

 

[dragonswarrior]

A concept as nebulous and unscientific as saying that people do bad things because the Devil possessed them.

Hardly. You can't prove that the devil led a systematic ruling of much of the world for several thousand years.

You can prove that men did that though. And still do. It's actually pretty easy. You just need to read a history book. Or look at the ratio of men to women in governments worldwide.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by your phrasing here. By "PoC" you mean person of color I presume? Someone being "probably correct" in assuming things about me because of my race is exactly the problem. I am often told that the racism I experienced due to the way my young life played out somehow totally doesn't count because I'm white, but needless to say, I don't agree. There are differences in the way two people of color might experience racism, and it doesn't invalidate either's experiences. To say that mine is invalidated by me being white is racism unto itself (not saying you said this, it is just a sentiment I often come across.) I'm not sure if I'm forming a coherent point though as I don't know if I came anywhere close to discerning the meaning of your post.

Person of colour, yes, and I was being a bit flippant by "probably correct" there.

I agree that the racism you have experienced isn't invalidated. Without knowing your ethnicity and situation, I can't guess, but one of the problems with this sort of thing is that "racism" is often used to mean "institutionalised racism", rather than any individual not liking another due to race. In most of the West, white people simply don't face institutionalised racism.

 

[Stu35]

I'm sorry but how does one keep their privilege in check might I ask??

From what I've seen on various corners of the internet, it appears to mean that White Men should never, ever have an opinion that isn't directly supporting everything a Vocal Feminist says.

Under no circumstances can you attempt to take a point they are making and subject it to critical analysis, or compare it to actual facts.

Any anecdotes from Women about the sexism they have encountered are to be taken at face value, and the inherent sexism against women within the system is to never be questioned, even when evidence does not support this.

For example - in the UK right now the people suffering the worst in the current economic climate are Poor White Males. This goes from job opportunties as adults right down to quality of education for children (Poor White Boys are doing the worst in Schools in the UK, have been for a while)*.

It's entirely taboo to suggest this to any self-described feminist who's trying to ram something about how hard life is for middle-class women these days. The very idea that I, a working class man, am somehow worse off than her, a middle-class woman, is simply not an acceptable one. (You will notice that very little feminist literature addresses class divides - unless it is to point out that women of the lower classes are more likely to be subjected to domestic violence. A very real problem, I might add.)

Without going too much into it (because I can't be fucked), but at the same time appreciate that there is a certain burden of proof on me in this, here's a link found after a very half-hearted googling:

poor White boys performing the worst in schools [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27886925]


Finally, this post may imply that I am somehow anti-feminist, I apologise for this - it is not the case, I, infact identify as a Feminist, but there is a major divide between simply treating women equally and addressing Sexism where I see it (and I do), and the constant, unrelenting broadside attacks being launched against White men on the internet these days. I appreciate that Sexism and Racism are major problems, but I find that, in the UK, the real problem is the Rich/Poor divide, and far too many of the more agressive feminists (many of whom hail from the middle-classes) spend so much time looking at the few white men in power (and associating them with all white men) that they forget that most of us are actually suffering worse than they are. Economically, Educationally. etc.


Finally, because this has been far too much seriousness for one of my posts, here's an Onion article that sums up my feelings quite well: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/white-male-privilege-squandered-on-job-at-best-buy,35835/]


Now, I'm sure there'll be responses to this, some arguing quite strongly against what I've said... Don't be offended if I don't reply, I honestly try to stay out of these kinds of debates and was planning to just post a tongue-in-cheek answer about checking privilege, but it kinda spiralled...

 

[dragonswarrior]

It often ends up being sexist/racist because it is often used without knowing a single thing other than the sex and/or race of the person being told to "check their privilege". Now I understand that the presumption of privilege is meant to be axiomatic to those traits, but that's where we run into a problem. If someone were to assume that, because I am a white male, that I've never faced significant racial discrimination, and thus hit me with the "check your privilege" stick, they have engaged in a bit of racism. They are making a presumption about me personally based on nothing more than their assumptions about my life based on my race.

I can personally reflect on my own life and know what privileges I have and do enjoy. This is why I say it should be used as a point of self reflection and not as a bludgeon in an argument. Now that does not mean that we can't talk about privilege and how it affects society or us as individuals; once we know something about the person's life maybe we can examine what part privilege may play in forming their ideas, but the axiomatic assumption about a person's experiences based on their race is, well, racist.

I do want people to examine how their experiences shape their expectations and their opinions, but I want everyone to do this, not just people we proclaim to be privileged. Whether or not the term SJW is viewed negatively or not I think is less important than how the ideas of equality, empathy and humanity are viewed. I would like it if people wouldn't associate feminism with the fringe crazy bigots who take up that mantle. I would like it if people would do the same for MRA. I wish people would stop thinking that Soviet Russia was what atheism leads to. But to me it's never really about the titles and always about the ideas. Call me a feminist, or not. Call me an MRA, or not. The important part is that I stand for the equality of people and their freedom to be who they are and want to be.

Interesting. Though, as you say you can personally check your privilege. So then you know (sticking with the race example) that there are a lot of privileges enjoyed by white people in some societies that PoC folks don't get to enjoy. And this is something across the board in these societies, not something that only white people in certain areas of that culture get to enjoy. (I'm thinking of USA here because that's where I live and what I'm most familiar with. Perhaps such wide spread privilege isn't true in other lands, though I doubt it.)

Therefore, though one can know nothing of your personal experience with your whiteness, if you say something that someone else considers racially offensive and is indicative of the general privilege enjoyed by white people in your society, I don't think one can say they did something offensive by asking/telling you to check your privilege in that case. Because YOU did the offensive thing first. And I do think that makes a lot of difference.

Again, not saying they are automatically right, just that they also aren't automatically wrong or offensive. If it turns out they were being stupid then I think in many cases it could be safe to say that they were being racially prejudiced towards white people. But if they had a valid point, then I think trying to flip who was offensive towards whom is just... well... Heh. It's privileged. It's the privilege to ignore what someone is saying because it offends you, when what you did in the first place offended them and they DON'T have the privilege to ignore it.

Which is why I'd really like to see this phrase grow. I think it's INCREDIBLY useful, and I would also like to see it stop being used as a bludgeon.

I don't think rape is a feminist issue because it disproportionately affects women, it's a feminist issue because the way rape is viewed and the resources a rape victim has is skewed. Saying the rape "affects women more than men" may be true in a statistical deconstruction of the number of times it happens, but to the individual who has been raped, saying "It affects women more than men" ends up coming off as a slight. I get that you mean the former and not the latter, and that this is merely a matter of semantics, but its that view that drives a big part of why male rape victims are often marginalized even more than female victims.

Also, to say that feminism should be just as concerned (In theory) with male rape as female rape is a huge part of the problem as well. It's nice to say, but does it lead to real results? We have a serious problem in feminism where the theory of what feminism is about often does not fit with the practice. This is why I think it is far less important for me to identify as feminist than it is for me to explain why equality is important. I don't need to be a feminist to support equality, nor an MRA nor a SJW. I find that we waste far too much energy bickering over what it means to be one of these things than what's really important; equality is our goal!

But rape disproportionately effects women because women are viewed as sexual objects to be possessed or conquered much more than men are, and that IS a feminist issue.

Though I see what you mean by the second bit in the first paragraph. Perhaps from now on I should rephrase it as I did above? Or perhaps I should simply be more careful to be more inclusive. Thanks. *grins*

I have no idea if it leads to real results. And I really hear ya about the theory/practice problem. At least for me personally, in the work that I do I go out of my way to try and be inclusive to "Men's rape is a feminist problem too" thing. But it is difficult with a lot of people and in a lot of situations, so I hear ya with that ending. I just think... Ignoring it or changing what I identify as isn't really the answer. Rather, embracing it and trying to do the best I can is I think the best path for me.

 

[AJ_Lethal]

Saying "check your privilege" in any context has as much meaning as saying something like "check yourself before you wreck yourself."

At least you can make sense of the latter ("watch your steps because they can be your undoing")

God bless fucking Ice Cube.

 

[dragonswarrior]

CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE YOU PALADIN HATER!

I've seen millions of these posts about Paladins being unreasonable. You CIS-SWM SCUM think you got it so easy, don't you?

We cant detect evil auras until level 5 because people do not show auras until said level. Not to mention we have a strict code of conduct that if we do not follow to a T, we lose all our powers. I dare you to be a Fighter or a Wizard and try the same thing.

Us Paladins have it much more difficult than you.

It's comments like yours that cause all this Anti-Paladin hate that WE have to live with on a daily basis.


and that is the basic SJW bullshit that always happens.

See how easy it is to claim to be a SJW all the while coming off as a complete tool?

Remember that one person on Tumblr that posted a picture of her wearing an Indian headdress because she was part Indian and people called her racist because she was a lighter skin tone than a "real Indian"?

you know the people that abused her to tears calling her all sorts of names?

they were Social Justice Warriors.

You claim to be a social justice warrior.

therefore, I believe that I wont take anything you say at face value and will continue to laugh at the Tumbltards who will waste $17k for an additional hour in the ball pit.

See, at first I was cracking up (because that was really funny) but then I realized you missed the point of my OP.

Which was to distance myself and terminology that I think is important from the ignorant and stupid on Tumblr.

Also, imagine for a second that you DO have to be a Paladin in a world where everyone judges you for a few stupid actions made by a vast minority of your peers. Wouldn't that suck?

Wouldn't you want to call ignorant posts like mine out on being stupid and ignorant? Wouldn't it feel really crappy when people told you you were being unreasonably for trying to show them how ignorant they were being?

Yea, that's what reasonable SJW's feel like ALL THE TIME. It doesn't help that a number of them are just like those unreasonable Paladin's... *sighs*

 

[chiggerwood]

snip

Damn dirty hipster ninja, but well said.

OT: My main problem with the social justice warrior crowd isn't the inanity in what they say or their stupidity in thinking that a post will change anything. My problems with them comes in five parts.

1. They want social evolution to take place in an instant.

2. They are far too hostile

3. They lack any understanding of cultural, sociological, and political evolution. (seriously I can't stand the term "Cultural Appropriation)

4. They refuse to try and understand those they disagree with, instead opting to mold them into an enemy to fight.

5. They refuse to accept any criticism whatsoever.

The fact that, despite my personal agreeance with many of their sentiments, (gender equality, gay rights, anti virgin/slut shaming, etc). These things combined make me wholly against them. Because of prevailing attitudes withing the social justice warrior subculture means that any time I want to argue a point that they share, I first have to put a little caveat before my statement that states that I do not align myself with these assholes, and worst of all it's causing women to abandon and openly rebel against feminism because of the dialogs put forth by the social justice warriors.


And don't even get me started on men's rights activist.

 

[dragonswarrior]

snip

The problem with that is that it's a male dominated culture that's doing all the oppressing. Yes, it is a HUMAN issue. Which is why it's so awesome to see men identifying as feminists. But at the end of the day most of these issues stem from a male dominated system of oppression, and so they become issues that disproportionately effect women, and that's what allows one to say that it's feminist issues. It's women's issues.

Honestly, I'm not even entirely sure how to respond to your post. *laughs* You spent the whole post being like "These horrible problems disproportionately effect women which is why we should stop making them about women!"

Can you explain more please? *Smiles* *Sincere*

 

[Gorrath]

Person of colour, yes, and I was being a bit flippant by "probably correct" there.

I agree that the racism you have experienced isn't invalidated. Without knowing your ethnicity and situation, I can't guess, but one of the problems with this sort of thing is that "racism" is often used to mean "institutionalised racism", rather than any individual not liking another due to race. In most of the West, white people simply don't face institutionalised racism.

That's always been one of the worst parts about my experiences and dealing with them. The presumption that I have not faced real racism because white people in the west simply don't face institutionalized racism. I've always wondered how many of the institutions have to be complicit or complacent before the racism becomes real institutionalized racism though. I think I need to beg your pardon as I feel compelled to share a bit of my life, which will likely not be a riveting read. I just don't see how else I can get my point across without it.

Spoiler

In my youth I lived in a poor neighborhood made up mostly of black people. I went to a school that was about 90% black and who's staff had two white and one Latino teacher. Me and my siblings were the regular target of rather vicious attacks motivated by the fact that we were white. Many, many complaints to the school, the police and to anyone else who would listen went unanswered. Upon one of the more vicious beatings I received, where I was held down and beaten with an aluminum bat, I was able to free myself by kicking one of my assailants in the face, breaking his nose.

I ended up sitting in front of the principle, who was a black man, along with the boy I had "attacked". He and I were both suspended from school for fighting. I protested, bringing up the numerous attacks that had never led to any black student being suspended and was told to basically shut my mouth. I was sent to sit in the waiting area while my parents were contacted and got to overhear a conversation between the principal and one of the staff. He said that he wasn't going to let some white kid's complaints about bullying ruin some black kid's future. It seemed that me getting beaten was some kind of karmic justice for all the wrongs done to black people by white people.

Calls to the police did nothing of course, since police didn't care about the neighborhood. I've always been told that cops don't bother with poor neighborhoods because the people there are minorities, but it seemed my white privilege wasn't enough to overcome that barrier to action either. My parents, much to my disbelief, actually tried to contact the NAACP for help. Needless to say, we didn't get a call back and there really wasn't a white people's organization to help with that sort of thing. Afterall, white people's organization is the government and the government works for white people; well, the rich ones anyway.

We were able to move away eventually (my father was in the army) and I was so excited and relived I actually cried. Our next stop was Germany and we ended up settled on the border between a German dominated area which boasted two skin-head gangs who weren't keen on Americans and a Turkish dominated area who's youth weren't keen on white, blue-eyed kids with brown hair and a German last name. I won't spend another four paragraphs on that, but I will say it was bad, really, really bad and no one in any position of power gave a damn.

So I leave it up to you, was that real racism? My beatings were based on my race, so that seems to fit. People in the positions of power actively or passively encouraged what was going on. Every institution that mattered to me and my situation was either complacent or complicit. But I still get to hear people say with a straight face that, while really unfortunate, it wasn't real bonified racism, not like the racism the black kid or his gang who beat the ever living crap out of me daily had to deal with. Poor kid, maybe if I understood what real racism was like, I could have understood why the guy holding the bat was the real victim.

Sorry again for the length of this, and sorry if any of this long-winded story comes off as having a nasty tone. I am not as detached from these happenings as I would like to be. This story, and many others I could share, are the reason I am fixated on equality. Equality matters to me because I know, really do know, what it's like to be on the receiving end of the sort of racial hatred that people of all races have to endure when put into a position of powerlessness. And yet people tell me I don't know. That I can't possibly know what it's really like. I guess that's why I don't say that I'm fighting for "white's rights" or black's rights" or "women's rights", I just fight for equality because I believe that everyone matters and that justice is personal.

Edit: Added spoiler tags so I'm not eating valuable realestate.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The presumption that I have not faced real racism because white people in the west simply don't face institutionalized racism. I've always wondered how many of the institutions have to be complicit or complacent before the racism becomes real institutionalized racism though.

As I understand it, it means that racism is a constant across the board, a problem in all areas of society, and something that can be escaped from anywhere in that society.

Rather than a matter of which and how many individual institutions are racist, that racism has become an institution in of itself. Again, this is only how I understand it, I can't claim to be an expert.

Sorry again for the length of this, and sorry if any of this long-winded story comes off as having a nasty tone. I am not as detached from these happenings as I would like to be.

There's no reason to apologise for that, people shouldn't be expected to be detached from their experiences.

I imagine that a little more up-front acknowledgement that these issues also affect men would go a long way to making the label of 'feminist' more acceptable to a lot of people, and eliminating the 'feminists only care about women' reactionary stance that some people take.

Not really. People will be reactionary, or not, you can't stop them by being reasonable, or watering down your stance, or anything else. If people are against equality, they will be against equality, you can't convince them otherwise.

 

[chadachada123]

snip

Note: Heavy editing was made from the original at the bottom.

Any time a word is hijacked, there's no going back. The Tea Party is a great example. It was originally a bi-partisan group that wanted to reduce federal spending. Nothing more. Then it got jacked by mainstream Republican politicians and turned into the morality-crusading fucks that they are today, with the originals being forced to abandon the name.

Don't forget that lame and moron and idiot all were originally medical terms like retarded. Once moron started being used to make fun of people, doctors switched to another term. Eventually they switched to retarded, which is all but completely used as a general slur like moron and idiot.

Once a word starts being used in an unrelated or different context, just accept it and either ditch it or accept it as an alternate definition, because there is no stopping it.

Otherwise, here's a guy that said another part amazingly, especially the last part:

If you are on tumblr doing SJW shit and telling people they are privileged then I think its safe to assume (and correct me if im wrong) that you yourself are pretty damn privileged?

Being an SJW what have you actually done? Have you gone to africa to build schools, have you protested for gay rights in russia and faced attack dogs and water cannons, have you protect women from rape and having their clitoris removed in Uganda? The real social justice warriors are out their today doing something, not telling people on tumblr to check their privilege because they feel guilty themselves

Side note: don't forget that how no matter how much you yell about how 'privileged' some Americans are over other Americans, EVERY demographic has largely ignored problems today. One that sits in plain sight but that no one even sees, for example, is that men are far worse off in nearly every part of the court system, from male inmates reporting FAR more sexual assault than female inmates, and from how harsh sentences for males over females, and definitely in relation to custody/alimony.

Don't take this to mean that I only care about male issues; of course not. I make sure to point out ALL issues that are largely unknown, male or female, black or white. Instead of pointing out the victims that everyone already knows about, I point out the victims that have remained in the shadows, which is an added punishment on top of their normal victimization.

 

[Cerebrawl]

This is kind of the point of my post though. Why would you let a small group of vocal idiots stop you from identifying as a feminist? Why not just be like "I'm a feminist, judge me by what I say not the name". *shrugs* I guess it can go many ways there, but this is the path I choose.

Because feminism has a LOT of baggage, and a lot of questionable dogma even in the mainstream bits. I disagree vehemently with second wave feminism on a lot of issues outside of the measurable equality bits, and even then they often go too far, wanting supremacy rather than equality. They want to replace the "patriarchy"(which really is more of a money-based oligarchy, it's rule by the rich), with a matriarchy. Second wave is also where a lot of it became adversarial, where men are the enemy. Anita Sarkeesian is a second wave feminist.

Third wave is more fractured than anything, I'd agree with some flanges, while vehemently disagreeing with others.

 

[And Man]

Oh, certainly male rape is a serious issue. Especially in prisons...society generally seems to view male prison rape as either hilarious, or an important part of the justice system. Both of those are horrific viewpoints.

However, this does not lessen the severity of female rape. People should be concerned with both.

I just wanna say that this is a really odd statement. Of course male rape doesn't lessen the severity of female rape. It's mainly seen as a male-on-female crime, and that was his point. The fact that you're taking what is largely seen as a male-on-female crime and saying that male rape doesn't lessen the severity of female rape (even though it's the former that is more often trivialized) almost implies that you feel male rape is less severe than female rape. Now, reading your other posts, it's clear that that's not what you meant or how you feel, but taken completely on its own with no regard to the rest of your posts, it kinda implies that, so I just found the post to be pretty strange.

On a separate note, I do agree that rape is a feminist issue, because, while they're both horrible, male rape and female rape both have their own issues that the other has to a lesser extent: female rape has much more victim blaming and more claims of false accusation (i.e. someone saying "you just regret having sex so you're crying that it's rape"), and male rape is more often trivialized (and even seen as comic) and victims are often seen as "less of a man" or have their masculinity come into question.