The dreaded "SJW"

[Seliph]

Oxford defines social justice as "justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society."
How does the term SJW relate to this?
SJW, aka Social Justice Warrior.
I see this term thrown around all the time, but what does it really mean? What do you mean when you use it, and why do you use it?
It seems like such a nebulous term, and I've seen it used to describe anything from extremist feminist groups to any policy remotely liberal or progressive in nature.

Looking at the first example, we have a feminist extremist group. Let's say they fight for female power, not an inherently bad thing. But then they also claim that men are inferior, and should die, etc. Very sexist, and they are defined as SJWs. But when looking back at Oxford's definition of social justice, the term SJW doesn't seem to hold up. You could certainly call this group warriors for female empowerment, but is their form of feminism a type of justice? Not really, sexism isn't justice. Therefore, it doesn't make sense that the term social justice warrior is applied to this group.
Another example of the usage of this term is when two scenes were changed in Persona 5 Royal's western release (for context, click here). Many people referred to this decision as "SJW" or as something bad. But why is it bad? What makes this SJW? Yes, it has a social justice component because these scenes were changed to remove some dialogue that presented harmful stereotypes of homosexual men, but people are using the term SJW to describe this decision as if it's a bad thing. As if the progressive depiction of homosexual people is a bad thing. Odd.

So why is the term Social Justice Warrior even a bad thing? Why does it have such a negative connotation? Isn't it a good thing to be someone who fights for social justice? I see nothing wrong with that. Every time I see this word used, it never makes sense. It's either used to describe people or situations that actually oppose social justice (example one) or is used to put down progressive changes/policy/movements, etc (example 2). Again, very odd.

What are your opinions? I'm interested to hear what people have to say.
Please keep this thread civil, thanks!

 

[FGFlann]

SJW was a term originally employed by advocates of social justice as a self-descriptor. It was then appropriated by their ideological opposition as a catch-all pejorative term for anyone that agitates for the rights of identity groups over the rights of the individual. It was further generalized into a pejorative term to describe any group or individual that supports actions perceived as antithetical to the freedom of the individual or those attempting to police the behaviour of others along those ideological lines.

TL;DR It's basically the same as calling someone a "busybody".

 

[Seliph]

SJW was a term originally employed by advocates of social justice as a self-descriptor. It was then appropriated by their ideological opposition as a catch-all pejorative term for anyone that agitates for the rights of identity groups over the rights of the individual. It was further generalized into a pejorative term to describe any group or individual that supports actions perceived as antithetical to the freedom of the individual or those attempting to police the behaviour of others along those ideological lines.

TL;DR It's basically the same as calling someone a "busybody".

Ah, so at this point, it's become more of a colloquialism and isn't so much used as a literal term. Makes sense

 

[Mythical]

I don't use it because I don't like how the word is used/what is associated with (as in not real discussions about the topics at hand instead of just slapping labels on types of people when they're dynamic)

 

[JadenAsh]

It is now unfortunately used as a derogatory term by people against every social cause they don't agree with, and in many cases out of ignorance or bias. Similar to the way the news media smears everything that goes against the establishment narrative as "Russian" as it was with the McCarthyism of the 1940's and 1950's

Not saying that the criticism is never justified, because in a lot of cases it is.

 

[Xzi]

It's slowly becoming meaningless because people use "SJW" interchangeably with the words "lib," "liberal," "socialist," and "communist." All of which mean very different things, of course, but all of which are basically the same curse word if you're staunchly right-wing or far right.

Do I use the term/acronym SJW? Sure, very occasionally if the subject is brought up. I don't necessarily see it as a negative thing, every group has those individuals that take things too far. Including anti-SJWs, who can oftentimes be far more extremist in their rhetoric.

 

[Deleted User]

The term "SJW" was (and still is) attributed to people who are left-wing supporters, but the thing is, right-wing have their "SJWs" too. It was never a very good term to describe anyone, but other terms like "Alt-Right" aren't either and it no honestly makes me laugh when I hear someone use it. "White Supremacist", "Black Supremacist", or just "White" and "Black" aren't that good either, it focuses on the skin color of a person, not the race he/she is.

To prove my point, I'll show four light skinned guys below and you have to guess who's the European one out of the four.

Spoiler

The point is to see if you can tell. If not, the answer is:

Spoiler

Ljubomir Stanisic (the last one)

And just another example, Africans aren't the only ones with brown or black skin as there are a lot of dark skinned Indians (I've worked with a lot in the past and they were great folks) out there and some probably think they're "black". By skin color, yes. Not by race (Indians are Asian).

Spoiler

In closing, all of those terms people like to use (SJW, Left, Right, Alt-Right, White, Black, etc) just vaguely describe what a person may be than what they are. Nothing more to add.

 

[Deleted User]

Anyone who claims to be an advocate for "justice" is quite frankly arrogant. The term SJW is correctly used on arrogant zealots.

 

[The Catboy]

I don't use it as it's a meaningless and vague term that seems to be applied to generally anything someone doesn't like and it's only ever used as a means of shutting down a conversation.

 

[seany1990]

anti-sjw are waaaaay more annoying than sjws could ever hope to be

 

[SG854]

anti-sjw are waaaaay more annoying than sjws could ever hope to be

Nah they're both crazy. You're just giving more flack to the anti's.

 

[Deleted User]

Regular anti-sjws are fine, I think you mean the anti-sjw sjws.

 

[SG854]

Regular anti-sjws are fine, I think you mean the anti-sjw sjws.

Anti's can be annoying. Especially when they go off on ridiculous tangents and bringing up irrelevant stuff, and think everything is a SJW conspiracy.

 

[Deleted User]

Anti's can be annoying. Especially when they go off on ridiculous tangents and bringing up irrelevant stuff, and think everything is a SJW conspiracy.

That sounds like the anti-sjw sjws.

 

[SG854]

That sounds like the anti-sjw sjws.

Anti anti-sjw sjw's

 

[FGFlann]

Good thing we're all Enlightened Centrists, amirite?

 

[Pipistrele]

Nah they're both crazy. You're just giving more flack to the anti's.

Misguided as they often are, so-called SJWs generally have heart in the right place and good points to bring up, while anti-SJWs's reasoning is often petty at best ("those SJWs are so annoying") and downright hostile at the very worst ("screw them minorities!"). That, and "SJW" is a derogatory umbrella term nobody intentionally chooses, while anti-SJWs are self-proclaimed and vocal about their bizarre behavior. That alone makes anti's infinitely more annoying

 

[FGFlann]

It sounds like you're sympathetic to one side over the other. You'll never reach enlightened centrism like this.

 

[Pipistrele]

It sounds like you're sympathetic to one side over the other. You'll never reach enlightened centrism like this.

You can't afford to be neutral on a moving train ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[DCG]

You can't afford to be neutral on a moving train ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That almost reads as an "If you're not with us, you're against us" :/

The problem I'm having with most SJW's or "progressives" is most of the time they don't think past the current problem and what a certain "fix" will do in the future, or how it can be exploited.
A female friend of mine use to be all "we need to accept everyone in our country, we're rich enough to make it work", until she started working and having a house of her own near some less affluent people, now she still wants to help, but no longer "here" :/

I also think we should try to help, but first we need to get our own shit together and people coming here should adapt to our way of life and not just collect benefits and try to get us to adapt to them.