What is a Social Justice Warrior?

[McMarbles]

It is a derogatory term used to discredit someone without adressing their argument. The new "PC" and I don't mean the personal computer.

*applause*

Because to address someone's argument, one would have to consider for a fraction of a second that maybe, just maybe, you might be wrong about something.

People don't want to debate anymore. They just want to shout the other guy down.

 

[Redd the Sock]

I sum it in the term "warrior". A warrior is someone that fights, but that can be both good and bad. Captain America fought to protect others, Thor started wanting to show off and get glory. A warrior monk would say violence might be a necessary last resort, a neocon hawk might want to bomb a country that looks at us funny.

To me a social justice warrior is someone that skews closer to the second choices in the sets. They're aggressive, angry, uninterested in middle ground and understanding, self victimizing, and usually out for some personal gain. Or in other terms, they're life isn't perfect, but all they want to do is wallow in self pity about how someone is keeping them down instead of building themselves up. The spout about empathy but show none to their opponent. They criticize, but hate being criticized. They're most active where the press coverage is, to the determent of lessor known issues (ie black Captain America = great move for diversity, the nearly all minorty team of Avengers = no one cares.) They dogpile on minor slights and faux pas. And at the worst end, they seem less interested in the end goal than in getting attention, either by the complaints themselves, on in the only acceptable solution being something big and profound (ie: who cares about ubisoft giving us a female lead in child of light if they didn't in Assassin's Creed). Oh, and it's also a bit of an ironic term, as warriors are mighty and face adversity, while SJWs are only mighty behind twitter, tumblir, or in safe spaces, and their causes are often about how little they can handle an outside reality that might trigger them.

Yeah, it's a bit of a pejorative to shut down someone, but for me, it comes out when someone needs to be stopped. they've shown no desire to meet in the middle and are just trying to vilify, guilt, shame, and otherwise yell at people until they get full agreement. The guy that emailed Nintendo about including gay marriage in Tomodachi life wasn't an SJW. The people that shouted homophobia, passed along misinformation about the bug originally patched out, and wrote lengthy editorials about how "problematic" is was that nintendo didn't affirm their orientation, that's SJW territory.

We need fewer social justice Warriors and more Social Justice Diplomats.

 

[LobsterFeng]

SJW is a stereotype of people that think everything needs to be diverse or else it's sexist/homophobic/transphobic. Thanks to Anita Sarkeesian the attitude has crept into the gaming industry and now every game is sexist. They can usually be found on Twitter and/or Tumblr.

They are currently the biggest boogeyman that 4chan faces. But at least it's spawned some pretty funny videos:


This video portrays a very accurate representation as to what people think a SJW is btw.

 

[Erttheking]

Yeah, I think this thread sums up everything wrong with this website right now. Way too many people assuming that the people who disagree with them are idiots, selfish, hypocrites, insert other nasty words here...was this website always like this?

 

[DOOM GUY]

...was this website always like this?

Can't say for sure that it has always been, but it's certainly been like this for the past few years.

 

[Erttheking]

...was this website always like this?

Can't say for sure that it has always been, but it's certainly been like this for the past few years.

Isn't there some law that says that after awhile a community will be distilled down to only the most hardcore members?

 

[newfoundsky]

Sorry for asking, but I haven't paid much attention to these threads, as they tend to be very long and filled with too many words and not really getting anywhere. So it's quite a simple question, what exactly IS a SJW? What defines him? (Or her).

There are two types of social justice warrior. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the person that accused me of being attracted to children because I said a young girl was ugly.

In all fairness, she was pretty ugly, too.

In all fairness, you should be allowed to have an opinion on beauty. Not everyone is born a supermodel, and not everyone is special either. Speshul, perhaps, but not special.

My point.

Exactly.

Having an opinion on whether or not a child is pretty does not make one a pedophile. Pedophilia makes one a pedophile, and I think this is where I and the social justice warrior community have a misunderstanding.

I'm a feminist. I'm also a cisgender male that will comment on how closely your child bares resemblance to a potato. The two are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Aurion]

Sorry for asking, but I haven't paid much attention to these threads, as they tend to be very long and filled with too many words and not really getting anywhere. So it's quite a simple question, what exactly IS a SJW? What defines him? (Or her).

In real life, a Social Justice Warrior is someone who has dedicated a lot of their time and effort to pursuing social justice projects.

On the Internet, "Social Justice Warrior" can mean anything from "wholly sincere equality advocate" to "kill-all-<group they aren't part of> insane Tumblr troll". Since it's the internet, the term has been appropriated to mock people of the second type, with an unfortunate bleed-over (it is the internet we're talking about after all, strawmen are inevitable) onto the first type of people. As a result, it's a phrase that's honestly pretty much lost all real meaning, at least in the realm of internet discussion... but that doesn't stop people from using it incessantly in both positive and negative contexts in an effort to prove how smart and/or witty they are.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Seeing just how indiscriminately that epithet seems to be flung? (I've seen it applied to everyone from marginalized people calling blatant bigotry by its right name, to vegans claiming to be oppressed for being vegan, to obvious trolls--mostly on Tumblr--trying to make a punchline out of the first category. And trust me; I wish that last one weren't true.) It's a concept that exists for the express purpose of labeling one's opponent as a thin-skinned keyboard activist (and therefore irrelevant), thus absolving oneself of accountability for one's misdeeds.

 

[NemotheElvenPanda]

A Social Justice Warrior is someone who uses the internet as a soap box for their beliefs, thinking that liking posts on Facebook, blogging, and sharing on Tumblr is equal to actual activism.

 

[Vegosiux]

We need fewer social justice Warriors and more Social Justice Diplomats.

I think I'm going to say you are now entitled to one (1) cookie, because that's pretty much the gist of it, I've always felt that social activism, actual social activism, shouldn't be exclusionary and based on "othering" people. And you know what...most people I know in reality that are invested in these issues are "diplomats". It's only on the internet where I run into so many "warriors".