5 ms·

You just defined SJW

by brotoss 11y ago

tdees40 11y ago
SJW is just a lazy slur. It's time to retire it.
- lemevi 11y ago
  It's too bad that this type of comment and the one above it are going to kill any meaningful discussion about this interesting and important topic. To quote Sam Altman[1]: > Most smart people I know have decided to just not discuss anything sensitive because of the internet lynchmob looking for any slight mistake > This seems unlikely to be a good development. At some point the conversations will only have the extremists left. We need to talk about this, but without heavy moderation which will introduce a different set of problems, I don't see how. [1] https://twitter.com/sama/status/610494599526641665 https://twitter.com/sama/status/610494599526641665
  - boomshucka 11y ago
    Well, in Sam's case, he has a tendency to talk about many things which he has no expertise. I'd guess he and his friends sit around talking about things which they don't really understand and think they have "insight". So do my friends and I. This is fine to the extent one is chatting with friends. It's the silicon valley thing to do, think we know waaaay more than we do. However I don't think it's a great idea to put forth one's amateurish "insight" as discussion worthy in a public forum. It promotes the idea that any position is "valid" when many simply aren't. Having a "discussion", which everyone seems to think is oh so important, is absolutely useless if it's between people who don't have any clue about the topic they are discussing. So, if the "internet lynchmob" has stopped people speaking publicly about things which they have no business doing, I can't say I feel sad about it.
- jon-wood 11y ago
  If being a warrier of social justice is a slur then bring them on. Could the people who are against speaking out for women and other minorities have picked a more ridiculous phrase to try and make an insult?
  - pekk 11y ago
    Overuse and broad use have made the term useless anyway. Aside from that, I do have an objection to the term: real advocates for social justice are doing something constructive. Literal warriors make war, which is destructive. That may have grim uses, but it isn't preferable to make our civil society as hostile as a war zone. Why do we need to appropriate the trappings of literal warriors, and why can't we embrace constructiveness instead of associating advocacy with destruction?
- pekk 11y ago
  As someone with sympathy for many causes that are attacked as "SJW," I agree. I never thought the term was reasonable. It's as embarrassingly hokey and strident as Christian evangelists self-describing as "spiritual warriors." It would be just as annoying to have all Christians dismissively labeled as "spiritual warriors" for their belief. Framing advocacy as warfare is inaccurate and unwise. Appealing to people with your arguments and example and negotiating points of agreement are huge parts of effective advocacy. Defining people as opponents to kill, disable or dominate isn't effective advocacy - and recent wars might even indicate that they aren't focuses for effective warfare, either. Furthermore, it tells your "opponents" that the only way to deal with you is to suppress you by force. When people get locked obsessively into these conflicts beyond reconciliation, it's sick and self-perpetuating rather than cathartic and it doesn't help anybody.
  - georgemonck 11y ago
    The thing is, there is no big yellow line between aggressive politics and warfare. If someone gets me fired from my job, that is actually worse for me than if I get punched in the face. And while many SJW's don't engage in violence themselves, they do play the role of trumpeter, and the trumpeter should be considered a type of warrior - http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/79.html http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/79.html And there are plenty examples of the left either using the state to engage in violence to further left-wing causes, or in tying the hands of the state to allow left-aligned mobs to engage in violence. The defining trait of SJW is not that they are activists for a cause. If they were just trying to win hearts and minds so they could win at the ballot box, that would be one thing. The defining trait is that they use any means at their disposable to defeat their enemies: naming and shaming, purging, getting people fired, getting people banned from communities, lawsuits, criminal complaints, etc. That is the mentality of warfare, and deserves to be called as such.
    - pekk 11y ago
      At this point, the term "SJW" is so overused as a content-free pejorative that I don't think it is even possible to rehabilitate it for any kind of constructive communication. I see people's use of this term as a signal that they have accepted the framing of warfare, because by use it appears to mean "my enemies who are so wrong and unjustly aggressive that I have the right to fight them tooth and nail." Unfortunately, the people "on the other side" will tend to see things the same way. And our tendency is to define the enemy group vaguely, over-generalizing by including lots of people who are not really malicious or even wrong. Maybe our anger makes us hungry for targets. Or maybe we are just so upset about the disagreement itself that we are happy to have a list of bad things the other side does as a way of trying to discredit people who are not involved in those bad things, but disagree with us. Not everyone is honest about why they want to hurt the people they publicly declare as enemies. Sometimes it is just intolerance of disagreement, or simple sadism. Even if the damage among the "combatants" didn't matter, it is often the "civilian bystanders" who are hurt. This is totally nuts. Even if these issues are worth being passionate about, they are not rationally comparable to warfare, they don't rationally justify war tactics. This isn't the Thunderdome, it's the civil society we all have to live in. And we don't have a real choice about whether that society includes people we disagree with, so it's better if we come to terms with that and find ways either to fence off or compromise in the common space, to mutual advantage. For example, I think you're stacking the deck with your talk about "left-aligned mobs" and that you are intentionally eliding the history of right-wing fascism to make "your side" look better than "the other side." I'm a realist, I don't think people will usually be civil without special effort. So for all I know based on your rhetoric, you'd identify me as an enemy and a threat based on my views, and even kill me if you had the chance; I will defensively avoid testing that. But that's as far as I should rationally go. The important part is that whatever our disagreements, and they may be very deep, I don't need to assume that we are at war, that I am a warrior and you are my enemy, and focus on somehow figuratively "killing" you. In my view, that would actually be very silly and self-destructive. I don't actually benefit from trying to damage you, it's pointless, it doesn't help my causes and it pollutes the civil society I have to live in. (Of course it is another issue if you decide to literally threaten me and my lawful interests, but then it is a purely defensive and practical issue; I don't need to respond to that by declaring war on your "tribe" and I certainly can't pre-empt that by turning every disagreement into an intractable "war.")
- georgemonck 11y ago
  What word would you use for a left-wing activist who aggressively wants to name and shame, or purge, or get fired, or get banned, any person on the right who crosses a certain line? These types of people exist, is is a real phenomena, so it needs a name.
olm 11y ago
Which arguably also is a label quickly thrown at people with different opinions.

You just defined SJW

by brotoss 11y ago

You just defined SJW

tdees40 11y ago

SJW is just a lazy slur. It's time to retire it.

lemevi 11y ago
It's too bad that this type of comment and the one above it are going to kill any meaningful discussion about this interesting and important topic. To quote Sam Altman[1]: > Most smart people I know have decided to just not discuss anything sensitive because of the internet lynchmob looking for any slight mistake > This seems unlikely to be a good development. At some point the conversations will only have the extremists left. We need to talk about this, but without heavy moderation which will introduce a different set of problems, I don't see how. [1] https://twitter.com/sama/status/610494599526641665 https://twitter.com/sama/status/610494599526641665
- boomshucka 11y ago
  Well, in Sam's case, he has a tendency to talk about many things which he has no expertise. I'd guess he and his friends sit around talking about things which they don't really understand and think they have "insight". So do my friends and I. This is fine to the extent one is chatting with friends. It's the silicon valley thing to do, think we know waaaay more than we do. However I don't think it's a great idea to put forth one's amateurish "insight" as discussion worthy in a public forum. It promotes the idea that any position is "valid" when many simply aren't. Having a "discussion", which everyone seems to think is oh so important, is absolutely useless if it's between people who don't have any clue about the topic they are discussing. So, if the "internet lynchmob" has stopped people speaking publicly about things which they have no business doing, I can't say I feel sad about it.
jon-wood 11y ago
If being a warrier of social justice is a slur then bring them on. Could the people who are against speaking out for women and other minorities have picked a more ridiculous phrase to try and make an insult?
- pekk 11y ago
  Overuse and broad use have made the term useless anyway. Aside from that, I do have an objection to the term: real advocates for social justice are doing something constructive. Literal warriors make war, which is destructive. That may have grim uses, but it isn't preferable to make our civil society as hostile as a war zone. Why do we need to appropriate the trappings of literal warriors, and why can't we embrace constructiveness instead of associating advocacy with destruction?
pekk 11y ago
As someone with sympathy for many causes that are attacked as "SJW," I agree. I never thought the term was reasonable. It's as embarrassingly hokey and strident as Christian evangelists self-describing as "spiritual warriors." It would be just as annoying to have all Christians dismissively labeled as "spiritual warriors" for their belief. Framing advocacy as warfare is inaccurate and unwise. Appealing to people with your arguments and example and negotiating points of agreement are huge parts of effective advocacy. Defining people as opponents to kill, disable or dominate isn't effective advocacy - and recent wars might even indicate that they aren't focuses for effective warfare, either. Furthermore, it tells your "opponents" that the only way to deal with you is to suppress you by force. When people get locked obsessively into these conflicts beyond reconciliation, it's sick and self-perpetuating rather than cathartic and it doesn't help anybody.
- georgemonck 11y ago
  The thing is, there is no big yellow line between aggressive politics and warfare. If someone gets me fired from my job, that is actually worse for me than if I get punched in the face. And while many SJW's don't engage in violence themselves, they do play the role of trumpeter, and the trumpeter should be considered a type of warrior - http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/79.html http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/79.html And there are plenty examples of the left either using the state to engage in violence to further left-wing causes, or in tying the hands of the state to allow left-aligned mobs to engage in violence. The defining trait of SJW is not that they are activists for a cause. If they were just trying to win hearts and minds so they could win at the ballot box, that would be one thing. The defining trait is that they use any means at their disposable to defeat their enemies: naming and shaming, purging, getting people fired, getting people banned from communities, lawsuits, criminal complaints, etc. That is the mentality of warfare, and deserves to be called as such.
  - pekk 11y ago
    At this point, the term "SJW" is so overused as a content-free pejorative that I don't think it is even possible to rehabilitate it for any kind of constructive communication. I see people's use of this term as a signal that they have accepted the framing of warfare, because by use it appears to mean "my enemies who are so wrong and unjustly aggressive that I have the right to fight them tooth and nail." Unfortunately, the people "on the other side" will tend to see things the same way. And our tendency is to define the enemy group vaguely, over-generalizing by including lots of people who are not really malicious or even wrong. Maybe our anger makes us hungry for targets. Or maybe we are just so upset about the disagreement itself that we are happy to have a list of bad things the other side does as a way of trying to discredit people who are not involved in those bad things, but disagree with us. Not everyone is honest about why they want to hurt the people they publicly declare as enemies. Sometimes it is just intolerance of disagreement, or simple sadism. Even if the damage among the "combatants" didn't matter, it is often the "civilian bystanders" who are hurt. This is totally nuts. Even if these issues are worth being passionate about, they are not rationally comparable to warfare, they don't rationally justify war tactics. This isn't the Thunderdome, it's the civil society we all have to live in. And we don't have a real choice about whether that society includes people we disagree with, so it's better if we come to terms with that and find ways either to fence off or compromise in the common space, to mutual advantage. For example, I think you're stacking the deck with your talk about "left-aligned mobs" and that you are intentionally eliding the history of right-wing fascism to make "your side" look better than "the other side." I'm a realist, I don't think people will usually be civil without special effort. So for all I know based on your rhetoric, you'd identify me as an enemy and a threat based on my views, and even kill me if you had the chance; I will defensively avoid testing that. But that's as far as I should rationally go. The important part is that whatever our disagreements, and they may be very deep, I don't need to assume that we are at war, that I am a warrior and you are my enemy, and focus on somehow figuratively "killing" you. In my view, that would actually be very silly and self-destructive. I don't actually benefit from trying to damage you, it's pointless, it doesn't help my causes and it pollutes the civil society I have to live in. (Of course it is another issue if you decide to literally threaten me and my lawful interests, but then it is a purely defensive and practical issue; I don't need to respond to that by declaring war on your "tribe" and I certainly can't pre-empt that by turning every disagreement into an intractable "war.")
georgemonck 11y ago
What word would you use for a left-wing activist who aggressively wants to name and shame, or purge, or get fired, or get banned, any person on the right who crosses a certain line? These types of people exist, is is a real phenomena, so it needs a name.

olm 11y ago

Which arguably also is a label quickly thrown at people with different opinions.