The sword cuts both ways for sure. Just people like to pretend it does not. I have known many people in my life who I would call "professional victims". My grandmother is an excellent example of this. She will constantly place herself in situations where she can be victimized even when she knows she will be victimized. Everything that happens to her is someone else's fault. Any opportunity to be seen as a victim she will instantly jump on. Being a victim means you get things. Sympathy, attention, general help etc. Some people realize this and they take advantage of it. Some people just have a victim complex drilled into their heads, either due to low self esteem, traumatic events, ideologies that teach them to be victims. The list goes on. Being a victim is a very lucrative thing if you want it to be and people that benefit from it will ALWAYS remain victims because of this.LetalisK said:
Reclaiming SJW
- Thread starter dragonswarrior
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Whatever happened to the term "Human Rights' Advocate", or "Humanitarian"? It not only sounds official and stylish, it's also not as charged as "Social Justice Warrior" and can pretty much describe support for anything related to inequality. People are most responsive to criticism and debate when it doesn't sound like you're on some grand crusade against injustice.
But, it's a terrible term and acronym that inherently portrays a poor image. Even if you can somehow "reclaim it", it still comes with an inherent stigma because of the image it paints, regardless of it's back history. (claiming one's self as a "warrior" of anything paints a very specific image)dragonswarrior said:
I advocate the adoption of a different term. My vote goes to SEA. Social Equality Advocate.
You can even allude to other meanings, like being a voice in a sea of voices, allusions to "people as islands", you name it.
Or this. What exactly is wrong with claiming one's self as being a humanitarian? It seems much of religious and SJW culture have come to the conclusion that being a "humanist" is one of the worst moral and ethical stances anyone can take.NemotheElvenPanda said:
And that simply baffles me...
I'm probably gonna regret getting into this discussion, but here are some points I have observed. I still hold my deep-seated belief that most problems are caused by a-holes (regardless of philosophical afiliation) & misunderstandings. We (as humans) have a buttload of issues, and I mean the following responses in an analytical fashion. There is no intent of sarcasm, mockery, jubilance or any tone other than analytical. Since tone does not transmit over the internet, I feel the need to add that.
Rehabilitation of the SJW term:
This seems very unlikely. This is compounded by several factors:
-We are dealing with a philosophical movement. Historically, philosophical movements are often remembered by their craziest members(short of MASSIVE propaganda/delusion, like founders of the US). It's why when people think "MRA", they think crazy rape threats and not legitimate concerns on mens issues. It's why when people think of christians these days, they tend to go towards pedophilia, westoboro baptist church & some nutty american evangelicals rather than community-minded deists that perform considerable charity. It's unfortunate, but human minds tend to work that way.
-The term started as an insult. Which makes rehabilitation THAT much harder, since the connotation will stay for a very long time
Rehabilitation of "check you privilege":
This is a problematic expression. I dont think it will ever be rehabilitated, because it has a lot of issues
-It is accusatory. Considering the current stigma attached with the various "isms", and the associations are not something nominally "good" people want to have. It also partially denies the value of meritocracy as others have brought up (which is a strong western value). Since this can easily attack one's core identity (both by attacking self-worth & one's sense of being a "good" person), it will be dismissed by most people (since nobody likes having their core identity attacked).
-It's vague. Telling someone "check your privilege" (or "your racist/sexist/etc.") does nothing to inform the individual of which behavior you find inappropriate. This is VERY important, since privilege is in part defined by the fact that it is INVISIBLE to those who have it.
-Side note: It is easily poorly used. If a person is exhibiting a specific behavior of "privilege", this can be appropriate. However, several examples used in previous posts seem to be very much "blanket" statements. This is very dismissive of people's individual experiences, as it assumes very similar lifestyles for a given group (which, as some have indicated, is not the case). In the end, it caricatures people if not used to point out specific behavior. So why not point out the behavior, rather than use a blanket statement? I will admit not understanding this.
In the end, I believe you have a positive intent OP, but that this might not be the best cause. There is also the issue of re-framing other people's experiences under your lens, which can seem dismissive even if you dont intend it to be so.
As a final question OP:
-In which context is "check your privilege" more appropriate than calling out specific unsatisfactory behavior? How does the expression (in your opinion) add value to an interaction more than calling out specific behavior?
Rehabilitation of the SJW term:
This seems very unlikely. This is compounded by several factors:
-We are dealing with a philosophical movement. Historically, philosophical movements are often remembered by their craziest members(short of MASSIVE propaganda/delusion, like founders of the US). It's why when people think "MRA", they think crazy rape threats and not legitimate concerns on mens issues. It's why when people think of christians these days, they tend to go towards pedophilia, westoboro baptist church & some nutty american evangelicals rather than community-minded deists that perform considerable charity. It's unfortunate, but human minds tend to work that way.
-The term started as an insult. Which makes rehabilitation THAT much harder, since the connotation will stay for a very long time
Rehabilitation of "check you privilege":
This is a problematic expression. I dont think it will ever be rehabilitated, because it has a lot of issues
-It is accusatory. Considering the current stigma attached with the various "isms", and the associations are not something nominally "good" people want to have. It also partially denies the value of meritocracy as others have brought up (which is a strong western value). Since this can easily attack one's core identity (both by attacking self-worth & one's sense of being a "good" person), it will be dismissed by most people (since nobody likes having their core identity attacked).
-It's vague. Telling someone "check your privilege" (or "your racist/sexist/etc.") does nothing to inform the individual of which behavior you find inappropriate. This is VERY important, since privilege is in part defined by the fact that it is INVISIBLE to those who have it.
-Side note: It is easily poorly used. If a person is exhibiting a specific behavior of "privilege", this can be appropriate. However, several examples used in previous posts seem to be very much "blanket" statements. This is very dismissive of people's individual experiences, as it assumes very similar lifestyles for a given group (which, as some have indicated, is not the case). In the end, it caricatures people if not used to point out specific behavior. So why not point out the behavior, rather than use a blanket statement? I will admit not understanding this.
In the end, I believe you have a positive intent OP, but that this might not be the best cause. There is also the issue of re-framing other people's experiences under your lens, which can seem dismissive even if you dont intend it to be so.
As a final question OP:
-In which context is "check your privilege" more appropriate than calling out specific unsatisfactory behavior? How does the expression (in your opinion) add value to an interaction more than calling out specific behavior?
No, but they should stop screaming and start engaging in rational discourse. See, the thing about "check your privilege" or any other kind of cheeky SJW phrase is that they're all basically condescending phrases designed to halt the discussion and/or distract from actually getting down to the issue and debating it using logic. If someone who has no knowledge of sociological/historical theory starts making sociological and historical claims that I know to be false because of my knowledge in those fields, then I'm well within my rights to tell that person that they're wrong and/or disregard their argument. Feelings aren't a replacement for argument, and I think this is something that SJWs seemingly don't understand. You are, by all means, entitled to whatever emotional reactions you want, but you cannot convince me of the truth of a position by appealing to your feelings. And this what SJWs always do, except less directly.dragonswarrior said:
They'll usually say something like "check your privilege" or "maybe you could just be a decent human being and consider the feelings of X" whenever they're faced with someone who questions the narrative they've been pushing. The presumption, of course, is that if you were a decent human being, you'd agree with them, and since you don't agree with them, you're not a decent human being. This is precisely why phrases like "check your privilege" are absolutely worthless (and will always be worthless) in any sort of discussion or academic environment. They don't encourage critical thinking; they are disguised ad hominems designed to shame you into agreeing with the other person for fear of being designated a bad person, even though the other person hasn't given any strong arguments to agree with them.
And while I don't deny that many people are offended for very good reasons, even the most cursory of glances at Tumblr shows that it's entirely possible for people to get offended at anything they want to get offended by. So yes, there's a great deal of attention seeking bullshit on there which establishes that being offended doesn't strengthen one's argument in the slightest.
Nobody actually ignores anything good that SJWs are trying to say (or any group, for that matter) because people cannot ignore solid, well-constructed arguments. Unfortunately, even though I've read literally hundreds of SJW articles and debates, I can recall very few that didn't degenerate into useless name-calling or emotional appeals by the end. Here are some things that I will always ignore (and which society rightfully continues to ignore, for the most part) when screamed about by SJWs:
1) Anything to do with cultural appropriation.
2) Anything to do with made up pronouns beyond he/she (and "they" for trans individuals). I will never use fae/faes/faeself as a pronoun. No.
3) Obviously made up sexual orientations/genders which pop up from week to week (I just read about 'enigender' today, for example).
4) Anyone who argues that PoCs hating white people for their whiteness is "just prejudice" and not racism. Anyone who retools the word "racism" to only ever mean "institutional racism" is intellectually dishonest and not worth my time.
5) Same as 4, except with sexism or any other sort of hateful prejudice.
6) The notion that rape allegations should be met with universal approval, and that the accused should be villified before the trial has even begun. Recently, Max Temkin, whom I actually rather dislike, was accused of rape. Not only did he deny it, and not only was there virtually no evidence, but surprisingly even neutrality about the situation was met with rampant hate on Tumblr. Frankly, I think that there's no good reason to believe that he's a rapist, based on the evidence I'm aware of. This doesn't make me a rape apologist, or whatever. I believe that crimes need to be evidenced, and that hasn't happened in this case.
7) The notion that 1 in 5 women is raped. This study, the authors of which asserted that it wasn't representative of the entire college landscape, is an abuse of statistics with extremely flawed methodology. People should stop throwing it all over the place as if it says anything particularly definitive about the incidence of rape.
8) The idea that rape jokes, sexually suggestive songs/books/movies etc. cause or contribute to rape. There is absolutely zero empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. I believe that something like "rape culture" exists, but this isn't what I take that term to mean.
9) The radfems who think that all penis-in-vagina sex is rape. No.
10) The desire to abolish the sexual binary as socially constructed. The sexual binary is not a social construct; it's a scientific one. The existence of intersex people no more invalidates this conclusion than does genetic variance invalidate the notion of species.
11) HAES. This is provably false and dangerous.
12) Self-diagnosis. Also, using words like "stupid" or "idiot" to refer to stupid and idiotic things is not something I consider to be bigoted or "ableist." When I call someone without a mental handicap an idiot, I'm not denigrating someone who happens to be born with such a defect; I'm juxtaposing the ostensibly functional brain of the person I'm talking to with the sheer absurdity of their argument. It's *as if* they have a defective brain, despite not having one. This, I think, is certainly worthy of ridicule.
13) "Differently abled" as a concept. I can understand certain cases in which it makes sense to characterize something as variance rather than an actual disability. But the fact is that in the vast majority of cases, what we call disability is actually worthy of the name. Someone who is an amputee is disabled. They aren't differently abled; they're restricted in what they're able to do; they are unable to do things as a result of their amputation(s). It's not an attack on their character. Someone who is severely autistic is disabled (you could possibly make an argument for people with Asperger's not being disabled, per se).
14) Otherkin. Absolutely crazy.
15) People opposed to so-called "truscum." As far as I'm concerned, if someone does not experience gender/sexual dysphoria, it's nonsensical to call them transgender. I like to ask people who disagree to concisely define what they understand gender to be, and to explain why their gender is non-dysphorically something that differs from what they understad to be the "typical" gender associated with their sexual makeup. No one has supplied anything remotely reasonable, so far.
I think this is enough for now. SJWs are not new to me. I am not exposed to some tiny minority of them. I have read tonnes of their stuff from tonnes of their websites. I am not an MRA. I would consider myself a feminist in the original sense of the term. I am a white cishet male from a middle-middle class family, and I feel absolutely no guilt about that fact.
What you suggest is something I believe and find logical. The principal's comments made it pretty clear that the whole reason he was a racist jackass was because black people, and maybe even he himself, faced racism. I've no problem at all accepting the fact that broad ranging racism against black people might very well have been a direct cause of my school having its own racist policies against whites. I am not willing to grant you that the whole thing was actually the fault of racism against blacks though. Everyone is accountable for their own actions.dragonswarrior said:
If I had turned into a vile racist who hated black people, no one in their right mind would accept that my racism was really the fault of my principal or the kids who beat me, they would simply hold me accountable for it. This suggestion again paints the kid wielding the bat as the real victim. If white people weren't so damned racist, he wouldn't have felt the need to have me held down and beaten me to a pulp. It might be true, but it does nothing to absolve him. He and I were both victims of racism, that much is true.
I was a victim because I was on the bad end of countless beatings. He was a victim not only of the broad institutionalized racism against PoC, but also a victim of the principal's racism against whites. If that damned principal and his staff hadn't been willing to overlook what the black kids did to us and instead explained to them why racism was a horrible thing, it could have helped all of us. Instead, he probably helped spread the very thing that he was so pissed about, and that irony is what really tears at me.
This is why I think it is important to reject the notion that institutionalized racism is something that just plain cannot happen to white people. This is why I think all racism should be called out no matter what color of skin the racist has. This is why I take seriously the double standards that some progressive people would like to put into play to combat racism. We must combat racism no matter where it originates or who it is targeted at. Anything less just makes us unjust hypocrites.
Edit - I want to add, I do not believe what you said is an attempt to invalidate my experiences by the way. I appreciate that I could share my story without you coming back and trying to tell me how unfortunate it is but that is simply doesn't matter. Obviously you think it does matter, and that's what's important.
Actually, rape doesn't disproportionately effect women, and since you're a teacher educating children, and seeing how you brought up male rape victims, it kinda horrifies me that you don't know this. A recent (Very recent, in-the-past-few-months recent) study by the government showed that men make up nearly forty percent of rape victims. The actual percentage is probably even bigger, considering how people speculate that men don't come forward with this stuff. There's some others studies supporting this, too. The number of reported male rape in prison is actually larger than the number of reported rape period for general society. And even that (Faulty) study that the "1 in 5 women have been raped" statistic comes from reports the number of men raped to be nearly equal to the number of women... the only issue is they basically qualified male rape as "other sexual violence" instead of, you know, rape. Which is actually a massive issue with the law, being made to penetrate isn't considered rape. If woman held a man down and forced him into her, he can't legally accuse her of rape. The law doesn't recognize it as such.dragonswarrior said:
And I don't bring all this up to derail the discussion or whatever, as I've been accused of that before. I bring all this up because no one cares. You said people turn a blind eye to male rape because men aren't supposed to be raped - but have you ever considered that it's statements like the one you made here the contributes to the problem? Saying rape is something that disproportionately effects women... It promotes this idea that men almost never get raped and thus, shouldn't get nearly as much attention. And that idea is so incredibly harmful to male victims that I just... I have to bring it up.
So please stop gendering rape. Please stop saying it disproportionately effects women. Please stop blaming the ignorance of it on the idea of male dominance. Because in doing so, you're actually making the problem worse.
HAES means "Healthy at Every Size".Megalodon said:
Basically, it's the idea that if you're 400lbs and 5ft tall with a BMI of almost 80, you're just as healthy as somebody with an ordinary BMI.
Until you start having health issues that is. In which case, you'd get those anyway, apparently.
The thing is that these days, most people use "check your privilege" as shorthand for "you don't get to complain about anything because the whole system caters to your kind". It's a haughty, condescending way of trying to shut someone out of an argument without any of those difficult things like "addressing their points" and "using cogent counter-arguments", and is often used by people who are pretty damned privileged themselves on the grand scale of things.DarkRawen said:
How is this not basically "I'm a hipster, hipsters are cool, stop making fun of hipsters" or replace the word "hipster" with "tea partyer," "eugenics advocate," "scene kid," "SJW," what have you? Being a SJW means that you beat people over the head about how important you think an issue is, all other demographics be damned; if you don't do that then you aren't one. In my honest opinion, "SJW" is just hipsterism without Instagram, organic coffee, and trilbies. Your choice of label probably has you siding with people you don't even agree with.
I'm always dubious on "reclaiming" a pejorative. I know the intent behind it, but 95% of people don't seem to grasp it in practice (if in theory)
A lot of those problems seem to be US-specific. Then again, we seem to have unique poverty issues. Unique within the industrial world, anyway.
Come on, adding "warrior" makes everything sound cooler.Dirty Hipsters said:
On the flip-side, or parallel side, there's this tendency to believe that if you've experienced any hardship, then claims by a minority group must be bull.Colour Scientist said:
The same could be said of "******" and "******." Blacks and gays still (sometimes) use the terms.LetalisK said:
In the West, it's fairly easy to be both poor and fat because a lot of the really terrible stuff is so cheap. Or maybe I should say "In the US...."The Lunatic said:
A lot of those problems seem to be US-specific. Then again, we seem to have unique poverty issues. Unique within the industrial world, anyway.
"Truscum" is a pejorative term used to describe transgender individuals who believe that gender dysphoria is a defining/necessary characteristic of transgenderism. This belief exists primarily to rule out Tumblr hipsters, aptly named "transtrenders," from calling themselves trans because they're a designated female at birth person who merely doesn't subscribe to typical female hobbies (so basically a tomboy). Then you have all these lunatics inventing hundreds of different "non-binary" genders that they think don't require dysphoria. Many of these people believe that gender is a choice.Megalodon said:
