Reclaiming SJW

[Delerien]

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.

So due to the fact that most leaders in the last centuries were male, men get raped in prison? Sorry if you already explained this in more Detail, I couldn't find it. But I don't really follow your train of thought here.

 

[MrMan999]

Most of the tumblr SJWs are young girls in their mid teens. And teenagers plus internet almost always equals stupidity. They should grow out of it.

 

[Gorrath]

Actually that story is intense, hardly dull. I also second Thalu in saying that you never have to apologize for getting emotional or heated over such things.

I do wish to say that from you story it seems like a lot of the problems you encountered stemmed from institutionalized racism against Black Americans, and classism against lower income/lower class families. The whole lack of police presence, shitty schools, etc. I think the principal was way out of line, but that doesn't make it institutionalized racism against white people. When the system you found yourself in was created by an racist institution against PoC in the US, it becomes really murky territory towards trying to say there is institutionalized racism against whites.

I am NOT trying to say that this invalidates the horrible shitty situation you and your family were placed in or the fact that no one would do anything to help you, whatever skin color they were. I am REALLY not.

But I am saying that it was actually the fault of the white dominated racist institution, as opposed to a smaller PoC dominated institution that was racist towards whites. Think about it, if Children of Color were given access to decent schools and police forces, would any of that had happened to you?

Maybe, but I think it's a lot less likely.

I can't comment on the German situation at all.

P.S This gets really tricky. I'm not trying to invalidate your story or your experience. Just asking you to look at it a different way.

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.

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.

 

[Saetha]

Rape is a feminist issue for two reasons. One: It disproportionately effects women. And Two: The rape of men can actually be traced back to the Patriarchal Oppressive System (or whatever the hell you wan't to call it.)

Thing is, feminism isn't supposed to be about "Women are superior!" Or... At least not the kind of feminist I am. It's about fixing social issues that came about because several millennium of dominant male power really fucked things up. For women AND men. A convincing argument can be made that the reason male rape is so overlooked is because men aren't supposed to BE raped in the first place. They are the dominant sex. Even when the case is male on male rape a blind eye is turned to it because of this reason. Of course this is stupid, and one of the many things that the feminist movement (in theory) is trying to fix.

Also, as I said. Rape, sexual harassment, and rape culture effect women SO MUCH MORE than it effects men that it isn't even funny.

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.

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.

 

[Megalodon]

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Bravo, very well said. I agree 100% with 13 of the 15 things you mentioned, primarily because I don't know what the other two are, specifically:

11) HAES. This is provably false and dangerous.

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.

Could you explain these two please?

 

[The Lunatic]

Could you explain these two please?

HAES means "Healthy at Every Size".

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.

 

[Wraith]

As a warrior do you actually fight or are you just another anon clicking Post on the internet?

My man over here, asking the tough questions.

 

[Megalodon]

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Thanks.

Bloody hell that's cretinous. So that's full agreement on 14 out of the 15, just "truscum" left...

 

[Samsont]

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The way I see it, it's just about being aware that you don't face discrimination that others might. It's not a "your life will never be difficult" accusation.

For example, I'm white, straight, well-educated, from a lower middle class Catholic family, I'm not Catholic but that's irrelevant, and I live in a society dominated by white, educated, straight, predominantly Catholic people. I went to schools and worked in professions that were mostly comprised of people from this group.

Chances are, if I lived and worked here for the rest of my life, I would never experience discrimination, unconscious or otherwise, based on my religious background, my social status, my sexuality or my race.

Checking my privilege is about acknowledging that others do.
Some people genuinely have the mindset that if they haven't personally experienced discrimination, it doesn't exist or that it's something people can just get over if they work harder and this is largely something that comes from a place of ignorance because it's not something they've experienced. It doesn't, or at least shouldn't, imply that it's my fault or that I chose for things to be this way, it's just about being sensitive to difficulties you don't experience.

OP: I see where your coming from but Social Justice Warrior is a pretty cringey term.

I don't think I could ever identify with a term that has "warrior" tacked on at the end, it's seems a bit disingenuous and full of self-importance.

I agree with you completely on this, and thank you for clearing up what "check your privilege" means, it's annoying as hell when people throw the phrase around but loads of people have no idea what it means.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

My problem with the whole privilege thing is that it's... well, a flawed system. And I don't mean in that in a "I've got issues too" sorta way, because, honestly, I find that checking my "privilege" against the normal stuff (sexuality, gender and sex identity, race and so on) leaves me with a shockingly low "privilege score" or whatever. It fails to take a lot into consideration, for instance, nationality, as well as how you handle it yourself, how open you are about it, and personal experiences. It does not account for things that would have a large impact on just how much discrimination someone could go through. It's rather flawed, and while using it as a way to reflect upon it yourself works, judging others based on it does not.

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.

 

[Nieroshai]

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.

 

[Something Amyss]

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)

Anyone who calls themselves an anything "warrior" needs to reevaluate some things in their life, and trust me, you don't want to be a "warrior."

Come on, adding "warrior" makes everything sound cooler.

Some people genuinely have the mindset that if they haven't personally experienced discrimination, it doesn't exist or that it's something people can just get over if they work harder and this is largely something that comes from a place of ignorance because it's not something they've experienced.

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.

...wait people honestly call themselves Social Justice Warriors? I was under the impression that was a mocking term coined by their detractors.

The same could be said of "******" and "******." Blacks and gays still (sometimes) use the terms.

Surely having enough money to afford enough food to over eat makes you more privileged than somebody who can't, right?

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...."

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.

 

[Gorrath]

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.

Out of curiosity, which of the poverty issues that the U.S. faces are unique? I can't personally think of any that I would agree exist in the U.S. and only the U.S. when compared with similarly sized industrial nations.

 

[Michael Kirley]

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Thanks.

Bloody hell that's cretinous. So that's full agreement on 14 out of the 15, just "truscum" left...

"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]

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Thanks.

Bloody hell that's cretinous. So that's full agreement on 14 out of the 15, just "truscum" left...

"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.

Cool, cheers. That's 15 for 15 then

 

[Sean Hollyman]

So how far does 'Social Justice Warrior' extend beyond Keyboard Warrior?

 

[Depulcator]

So are we starting the hash tag #notallsjw? Because that looks like the direction you're heading.