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Can you give a little more depth to the position that social justice is 'demonstratably harmful'? Edit: I ask because as a teacher who's married to a social wo

Can you give a little more depth to the position that social justice is 'demonstratably harmful'? Edit: I ask because as a teacher who's married to a social worker I'm pretty sure we both get up every day and try to improve the lives of people in our community.

Karunamon 11y ago
Not the concept of social justice (which generally includes positive things like like equality of opportunity), but the label social justice warrior. Those are two different things. Here's my litmus test: * Do you parrot discredited statistics like the wage gap? (Bad information is self evidently harmful) * Do you instantly cut off communication with people who do so much as disagree with you? (Fosters an echo chamber, see bad information above) * Do you publicly label people who disagree with you as words ending in -ist? (Such labels are of questionable value anyways, less so when they don't even apply, and that's before talking about the social consequences) * Do you try to get people who disagree with you fired? (Nuff said) * Do you rally your friends to pressure media companies to change/stop making things that offend you? (Harmful to free expression, artistic integrity, and probably the economy) * Do you use hateful language against people, and then rationalize it as okay because those people are above you in some social hierarchy? Then you are not a "social justice warrior" or "SJW" and the "harmful" label does not apply.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  You might need to add something about the goals, otherwise you very neatly describe people in Gamergate, who ironically enough, apparently popularized the term. Maybe we can call those that use such tactics for social justice aims, Social Justice Gators, to clarify things while annoying people in various camps?
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    Well, I don't really share your views there (and I am quite curious how you arrived at that conclusion), but HN probably isn't the best place to hash that out. Would you be willing to continue this offsite?

Karunamon 11y ago

Not the concept of social justice (which generally includes positive things like like equality of opportunity), but the label social justice warrior. Those are two different things. Here's my litmus test: * Do you parrot discredited statistics like the wage gap? (Bad information is self evidently harmful) * Do you instantly cut off communication with people who do so much as disagree with you? (Fosters an echo chamber, see bad information above) * Do you publicly label people who disagree with you as words ending in -ist? (Such labels are of questionable value anyways, less so when they don't even apply, and that's before talking about the social consequences) * Do you try to get people who disagree with you fired? (Nuff said) * Do you rally your friends to pressure media companies to change/stop making things that offend you? (Harmful to free expression, artistic integrity, and probably the economy) * Do you use hateful language against people, and then rationalize it as okay because those people are above you in some social hierarchy? Then you are not a "social justice warrior" or "SJW" and the "harmful" label does not apply.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
You might need to add something about the goals, otherwise you very neatly describe people in Gamergate, who ironically enough, apparently popularized the term. Maybe we can call those that use such tactics for social justice aims, Social Justice Gators, to clarify things while annoying people in various camps?
- Karunamon 11y ago
  Well, I don't really share your views there (and I am quite curious how you arrived at that conclusion), but HN probably isn't the best place to hash that out. Would you be willing to continue this offsite?