Ask The Tropers

It seems pretty neutral to me. It's correctly defining SJW in the way it was intended to be used (those Political Correctness Gone Mad types) and as an insult while acknowledging it's a Vocal Minority. It spends more time talking about right-wing groups.

The only issue I really have with that entry or the ones around it is the use of the term political correctness since while it's a commonly recognized term and I understand what it's trying to go for, it's also a phrase that's become somewhat loaded. Perhaps it could be replaced with a more neutral phrase like sociopolitical awareness, although I understand leaving it alone as "political correctness" is a phrase that is widely understood by people.

I do take issue with this entry though:

• This move towards more correctness and rectitude is the result of backlash against the "Baby Boomer" generationnote , now portrayed by later generations as selfish, immature freeloaders with an unrealistically simplistic (and overtly utopic) vision of the world. It hasn't helped that the reputations of many of the boomers' most important symbols and idols have been shattered overnight. A glaring example of this generational divide is the rejection of 20-something feminists of the bikini and the "sex positive" philosophy championed by 1960s/70s-era feminists. On the other hand, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers also accuse Millennials of being selfish, immature freeloaders with an unrealistically simplistic (and overtly utopic) vision of the world.

If anything, from my experience it seems to be the opposite. Second Wave Feminists were known for their pearl-clutching about how sexualization of women was inherently misogynistic, which is what spawned the notorious Feminist Sex Wars. Meanwhile modern feminists are far more likely to be sex-positive and embrace sexual liberation, albeit in a casual fashion, evidenced by modern movements to condemn attitudes considered Slut-Shaming. There's a lot more positivity among feminists towards wearing bikinis as a form of lesbian solidarity and as a form of reclaiming female agency (i.e. wearing the bikini because it makes you feel powerful as opposed to letting men's perception of you dictate your fashion choices).

^ We could just say "Social Justice", though it's a bit redundant considering what SJW stands for.

Edit: As for the rest of your post, I think the issue is that there's multiple branches of feminists. Some modern feminists are incredibly sex-negative while others are very sex-positive, and it's the same with second wave feminists; you have the ones that preach that All Men Are Rapists while others preached for sexual liberation and personal freedoms.

So trying to pin down the generations is impossible because both waves are made of different feminists with different beliefs.

Hmm, calling it "social justice" and putting emphasis on the warrior part or the acronym part would not be a bad idea.

The term "political correctness" has generally negative connotations, making it redundant to say "people who take political correctness too far". We also don't use ROCEJ in examples anymore.

In response to ^, I've gone ahead and cut the last sentence completely, leaving the rest alone for now

• However the rise of social justice has also spawned a massive backlash. Terms like "Social Justice Warrior" ("SJW" for short) have risen to mock people who take it to the level of political correctness, with a Straw Feminist stereotype being associated with the Vocal Minority on social media websites such as Tumblr and Twitter. Opposition to multiculturalism amid increased immigration and terrorism have spawned far-right populist parties which many feel are harboring sentiments reminiscent of the Third Reich. In addition, neo right-wing groups have emerged, with varying stances towards social issues. These groups are dubbed as the "alt-right", and may be the counterclaim to more liberal millennials.

Does this sound better?

Why are we analyzing real world political trends at all? That sees incredibly off-mission for the wiki.

Well, this sort of discourse does influence media and the way people discuss and analyze it...

Then let's talk about that, when it's relevant. This is just us talking about something way out of our purview.

It's Useful Notes, which has multiple other pages dealing with politics and political issues. That's ideally the place where this kind of thing is supposed to go.

That's fair I guess. I personally don't believe Useful Notes pages should exist at all, because they all have the same problem of being massively off-mission for the wiki, but that's not the question at hand.

At the proposed tweak, as well as what precipitated it:

I actually don't think 'political correctness' has generally negative connotations to the point where 'taking it too far' is redundant. (Maybe because I live in a very liberal environment?) 'Taking it to the level of political correctness' would actually be a good thing at my first assumption and quite different from taking it too far.

Yeah, I see the term “politically correct” used completely unironically to describe inoffensive language in a non-disparaging way all the time.

So we can just cut the part complaining about feminists because it's not correct or even relevant?

Where I'm from, "political correctness" is a buzzword because it's either used by the right to complain about being a decent person, or used by the left to complain about the former, or about people caring more about the appearance of doing the right thing than anything that would genuinely matter. I've never seen it used in a neutral fashion so to speak.

Yeah, cut the feminists part.

Alright, I trimmed that part of it.

^^^ If we're going to look at it even deeper, "Political correctness" isn't even a real thing. A sentence that says the term "SJW" is directed at people who "take political correctness too far" is like saying the term "cuck" is directed at people who take "white-knighting too far". All of these words are, at their core, made-up nonsense to negatively describe a certain mindset or people who adhere to that mindset. Trying to debate which one is more accurate is futile, because none of them are.

I also take issue with the use of Vocal Minority; that term is useless in this context, because any grassroots movement is going to start small.

My proposal for a rewrite would be:

"Terms like "Social Justice Warrior" ("SJW" for short) have risen to mock groups which oppose the status quo for reasons seen as unjustified."

^ I agree.

I agree. There seems to be some confusion about the fact that "political correctness" has always been pejorative. There was never a movement that championed it as a positive value, the term has always been an insult.

I think it was referred to as a Vocal Minority not for being grassroots but because the original meaning of the term SJW was for the extremists, the people who made a smaller group than the normal people in the social-justice movement who just took things way too far. The unironic "72+ genders" and "all sex with men is rape" sort of people. They are a Vocal Minority, but they received a lot of focus because of their extremity and aggressiveness over their beliefs, before the term "SJW" started being used for anyone with beliefs more liberal than "Heil Hitler".

But yeah, I think this example is trying to use SJW in the original context, referring to the Vocal Minority of extremists within the small grassroots Social Justice movement.

I don't even think the extremists unironically called themselves SJW.

Honestly, do we really need this paragraph at all? Extreme political beliefs aren't really unique to 2010's. I think the only truly relevant information is how the Internet and social media has interacted with politics, which allows more exposure to extremists.

v While there are specific unique ways that politics emerged in the 2010's (such as how certain memes gained political subtext, like that whole Pepe the Frog thing, or how sites like Tumblr and Twitter influenced politics), this paragraph doesn't really give detail on those. It just talks about how some people were really into enforcing political correctness and others were borderline Nazis, which isn't quite unique to the 2010's. It also kind of implies that political correctness is responsible for the rise of the alt-right which is....kind of a contentious take.

I think it's more about the type of political groups that unfolded in the 10's, because that might be kind of relevant.

Also, no, nobody unironically called themselves SJW. It was always an insult, but originally was directed at the extremists specifically- hence the "Warrior".

^ The form of "SJW" that was originally targeted towards "extremists" lasted about the lifespan of a mayfly because almost everyone who ever heard the term heard it within the context of "someone who advocates for a cause I don't care about". And, thus, when the term is used at present, that is always the context. For the argument of "but SJW/Political Correctness has a solid, neutral definition of extremists" to hold any weight, then people on the progressive, left-leaning activism side of the field would have to use it as an unironic descriptor of extremes amongst themselves. And they do not.

Hell even your arguments here:

• "The unironic "72+ genders": Which shows a gross mininterpretation of the argument that gender is a spectrum and any labels are thus "arbitrary". You can literally unironically argue for "seventy-two genders" and NOT be an "extremist" because we are always learning more about human sexuality/gender/gender-expression/etc.

• The "all sex with men is rape" sort of people: That is covered by Straw Feminist; and, again, is a misinterpretation of a "valid"-ish concern. Traditionally speaking, there have been a LOT of situations that society has simply accepted as "sex" which we would now consider Sexual Extortion or Marital Rape License, or flat-out Questionable Consent.

Sure, you can try to pigeon-hole the exact example to the most cartoonish of extremists, but even then, if you ask 4 people what that means, you'll get 12 opinions. Thus, the term basically means "people who advocate for causes I don't care about", which is (at best) not useful in a descriptive example and (at worst) normalizing loaded language.

^^ I disagree with the argument that the 2010s haven't been a "special" time in terms of far political extremes. The argument that political extremes have always existed doesn't hold water when a president like Trump is in office and the US has been host to more race riots in recent years than it's seen since the Civil Rights movement.

Do I actually care if the example stays or is scrubbed? No. But if it stays, I want it to be as well-written as possible.

See, the fact this very discussion is leading to debates over the term makes me hesitant to include it in the article as currently written.

Also, when I say 2010's isn't "special" I mean that the article suggests that the mere existence of "political correctness" and the backlash against it is something exclusive to the 2010's, which isn't true given how there have always been people fighting for and against what's socially acceptable. I think it should be reworked to discuss the way specific aspects of the 2010's - social media, the Trump presidency, the progress of LGBT-related legislation such as legalized gay marriage in the USA, etc - have influenced social justice.

Nubian, I was referring to specific things people actually believe, not over-simplifying or making claims.

There's literally a list on Tumblr of over 70 genders. I'm not making fun of the idea that gender is a spectrum because I fully believe that it is, and I also don't care what anybody identifies as; I'll respect them. I'm saying "72 genders" because some people out there really do (or did) spread the idea that there's that many possible genders. That's why I used such a specific number and didn't just exaggerate and say something like "1000 genders" or "infinite genders".

And yes, Straw Feminists are one of the kind of people who were targeted by the original meaning of the SJW phrase. And again, I'm not mocking the actual core issue. All I said was that some people out there do believe that it's impossible to be in a consensual relationship with a man. And that's what I'm referring to.

So please, get off my back. I'm not advocating or arguing for these things. Literally all I said was that people with these beliefs do exist and that isn't an exaggeration. We can argue over how logical or not these ideas actually are but don't claim I'm making exaggerated arguments when that's nothing close to what I'm doing and when I was referring to very specific things people actually say, not making up shit to strawman.

Anyway, my entire point was just that the example is using the original definition of SJW. It's not the one people actually use anymore, but it's what the term was originally meant to mean, so I was trying to preserve that so that we wouldn't have an argument like this.

Straw Feminist cannot refer to real people. Real people cannot be strawmen. Just want to clarify because I see the term used erroneously on this site.

• "I'm not making fun of the idea that gender is a spectrum because I fully believe that it is, and I also don't care what anybody identifies as; I'll respect them. I'm saying "72 genders" because some people out there really do (or did) spread the idea that there's that many possible genders."
  • If you don't see how this statement is a contradiction, then we are at an impasse and there's nothing left to discuss. This isn't me being "on your back" —- this entire conversation is simply endemic of the problem that mewtron and I are trying to convey.

How is that contradictory? All I said is that people do believe there's 72 possible genders. I never gave my personal thoughts on it, just that this belief exists and the list on Tumblr is proof of that.

It's honestly really hard for me to wrap my head around the concept of gender identity because it's very abstract and since I'm cis, I've never once even had to question it. I 100% respect everyone's identities and I firmly believe in the spectrum theory, I just can't fully comprehend how it's meant to work and how other people feel. So I legitimately have no way of knowing if there really is 72+ genders or not, but I'd never refuse to call someone by their preferred pronouns if they really did identify as, say, "Caelgender". I would have no way to know if it's a real phenomenon or not, so while maybe I'd be really confused and would have trouble understanding what they mean I'd be accepting of it.

But my actual point still stands. Some people claim that there's at least 72 genders. Those people were considered more extreme than others because of the amount of identities that opens the door to, with many of them seeming really odd or outright impossible (regardless of if they actually are possible, as again, it's kind of impossible to even really know for sure unless you're the one experiencing it). Those people got called SJWs.

That's all I was trying to say. My entire point was just "SJW was meant to be for the extremists and that's what the example is referring to so changing it sort of changes the meaning of the paragraph".

If I sound a little more snappy or defensive than usual, I apologize, it's not you. I've had an emotional week and so I'm kind of stressed and this isn't a debate I intended on having.

We really should not get into debate over nonbinary genders here, or debate whether certain beliefs about gender qualify as "extreme." Even the original entry isn't tying these descriptions to any specific beliefs.

I actually think it's fine to mention that "SJW" comes from mocking a certain group of people as long as the entry doesn't cast judgment on said people. It's something that originated in the 2010's and shows up in media from the time. Personally, I just think the entry doesn't have enough detail - not about specific beliefs, which we shouldn't get into for reasons made clear in this very query, but just about what fostered these sentiments and how they were expressed.

Right. I only mentioned those this as examples of what SJWs, in the original meaning of the term, believed in. It's more about what other people find extreme than if the beliefs are extreme, considering it's an insult, and that's what I was trying to explain.

I agree with War Jay 77 and Mighty Mewtron on keeping the entry after modifications. Though I don't necessarily agree with their thoughts on the 72 Genders issue (which I suspect is possibly a case of them misspeaking), besides getting fixated on this matter is also going quite offtopic.

What this entry in the form that we plan to have it at would be talking about, is just describing a broad sociological phenomenon and its origins, without making a values judgment about it. The former is entirely within the purview of this website, and the primary purpose of these articles, the latter is agenda-based troping.

Anyway, having actually been there for the origins of the term in 2011-2012, I can validate that its original meaning was something far closer to Don't Shoot the Message - it was coined by people with a sincere interest in social justice causes, to criticize others who they believed got caught up in the performative aspects of social justice, who were more interested in harassing and bullying people under the guise of righteousness than any real desire for justice, or who were hypocritically espousing their own bigotry (e.g. attacking LGBT activists for insensitivity to mental disorders over pedantry in word choice, people who criticized racism by hurling misogynistic slurs and threats and vice versa etc.).

Later on it became repurposed to include those who misappropriate sociopolitical terminology in bad faith to win fandom arguments and so on, as they had been a regular problem in fandom for a while (those who engaged in Die for Our Ship by accusing female characters of being "weak and unfeminist" being a common one at the time, for example).

It was only later (with the advent of the Hashtag That Shall Not Be Named) that alt-right trolls start using SJW to attack all people who were politically left-leaning for them and make it mean Political Correctness Gone Mad. People who insist that it was always an attack on Political Correctness Gone Mad from bad-faith rightists are usually the kinds of bullies and harassers themselves, that the term was aimed at stopping.

I don't think anyone here ever said that the term has "always" been used to attack left-leaning politics. However, I stand by the fact that that definition was not at all in widespread use at the time. By the time the term had become normalized in everyday language, it had been irreparably linked to left-mocking rhetoric. For example, what is the difference between "people under the guise of righteousness than any real desire for justice" and what the average internet troll thinks an "SJW" is? Almost nothing; that is exactly what almost everyone who uses the term thinks is true about an "SJW". There is no fundamental difference between what the term meant on paper in 2011 and what its troll usage is now. Even arguing that its original use is "valid" is like stating that there was ever a valid meaning of "libtard" or "cuckservative".

Sure, but the example is about the word's origins, not the current definition. It specifically speaks about what it was coined to mean, which is why I'm saying we should try and stick to that definition for accuracy's sake, rather than try and figure out a way to refer to the broader, less meaningful definition of "anyone who's left wing".

Except, again, the "original definition" is practically identical to how it's used now. You can literally accuse anyone of being more talk than action.

Which is why my suggestion for a rewrite was: "Terms like "Social Justice Warrior" ("SJW" for short) have risen to mock groups which oppose the status quo for reasons seen as unjustified."

I have to toss my hat in and agree with Warjay and co. Like it or not, the whole SJW thing is huge and any discussion of the new 10's would frankly be incomplete at best without at least a mention of it as it was a large, real, and unavoidable part of the decade that continues to be relevant to this day in things such as the cancel culture craze. We can't just ignore extremes on the left and only focus on extremes on the right, frankly that's irresponsible especially during a time where extremes on the left side have made themselves more known than ever in recent history. I'm not trying to justify extremism or attacking of people on either side, only stating that we should be documenting these unavoidable facts even if some people find them ugly.

That's all I have to say.

It's not about being more talk than action, though that does play a part; it's about being a bully for the sake of Social Justice while espousing rather extreme, if not entirely inaccurate, views about reality- things most people just find a little bit too far. That's what SJW was talking about, hence "Warrior". It's about being so aggressive and hostile and overboard in a fight for justice, not about not performing actual activism.

I think the term for more talk than action but otherwise harmless is "slactivist"

I already explained what that meant in the full version of my post you're referring to: "[people] who were more interested in harassing and bullying people under the guise of righteousness than any real desire for justice". Please do not quote mine me as it's a bad-faith argument to make.

I'm pretty clearly talking about people who preoccupy themselves more with the harassment and bullying aspect, and for whom any desire to alter the status quo gets little more than token acknowledgement, which means your proposed redefinition is not accurate and thus not a useful way to edit the passage.

Slacktivism, aka more formally criticisms of performativity on social media, is a thing that people will complain about with certain kinds of people who talk about social justice. If people want to argue about it somewhere else they can. But while there is some Venn diagram overlap, it is relatively orthogonal to the origins of "social justice warrior" that we're currently talking about in this thread, which was primarily about criticizing bullying behaviors. Aka Fans complaining about Fan Dumb for shooting the message.

^ & ^^^ No, as Mewtron said, the original term for "SJW" was a person who performed the basic actions of caring about a cause while doing absolutely nothing to actually advance those positions. As stated in this article, it basically meant the same thing as "virtue signalling".

Once again, I think this debate is lending credence to my point. Here we are trying to debate the validity of the "original meaning" of a term when we can't even form consensus on what the original meaning was.

Edit: Also, I didn't "quote mine" you. The selection that I used was meant to be an example of how there is little difference from that original intention and how trolls use the term. By all means, include the part about "bullying" if you like, because that is ALSO an accusation that trolls make. The distinction is minute and in no way mutually-exclusive.

Honestly debate about the "true" origin of SJW isn't really necessary beyond the understanding that it is a pejorative of some kind, and this lengthy derail about it was not necessary in the first place.

With that understanding:

• Terms like "Social Justice Warrior" ("SJW" for short) have risen to mock people who are perceived as Political Correctness Gone Mad

Should be sufficient. The above sentence is not making a value judgment, nor is it discussing the specific origins of the term (which is a purely academic matter), it's just describing a common way in which the term is utilized. This whole entire 20-something comment long derail has been thoroughly unnecessary and excessively circular.

The vast majority of this thread believes that such a succinct statement should exist, and I don't see anyone else agree with you to take it out, so this debate should've been settled long ago.

That's pretty close to what I suggested. I prefer the wording I used, but I have little objection to using that.

I feel like Alley's might be slightly better because it captures the extremism part of SJW, which I guess wasn't part of the original original definition (weird because the "warrior" bit kinda implies that it should be, and if it really was about slacktivism originally I can only assume the "warrior" part was entirely sarcastic. Still though, "extremists" is what the SJW phrase evokes when not used in a very casual and broad context).

Yours is basically the same meaning-wise, but I do think the whole Political Correctness Gone Mad angle is a bit of a stronger way to capture the whole intended tone of the phrase SJW while being a little less wordy. IDK if I'm making sense but that's the way I see it.

IMO the edit cites less the extremism or slacktivism (as again those are academic terms) and more to it as a matter of perception, again I want the entry to avoid making a hard values judgement and to respect the agency of the reader and previously suggested changes were too biased towards a particular side without making it clear that this is inherently a bit YMMV.

I'm keeping the link to Political Correctness Gone Mad because it's a fairly broad term whose main trope page discusses both any legitimate criticisms of certain behavior from internally among the left, as well as the right-wing hysteria side of it, which avoids us from having to specify too much in the first place. Because we already have that part of the website to go into the nuances of debates about its validity.

^ The extremism aspect of SJW absolutely was a part of it, that is correct. Perhaps it's not the only connotation, but one of the absolute earliest blogs criticizing "SJW behaviors" began by primarily citing examples of posts where users were being excessively abusive, or pushing particularly niche and controversial "extreme" beliefs like "Kill All Men" and pro-sectarianism as universal fact. But again that's not really relevant to this discussion or how to edit this line so let's not spiral into more debate over this.

^ What's your source for that? Because I cited two different sources above that explicitly stated that it was the performative aspect of an alleged "SJW" that was the main definition. Extremism was never mentioned; the only qualitative statement made was that they "vehemently" defend a position as long as it gave them some sort of clout. But they made it absolutely clear that the term was synonymous with the later-coined "virtue-signalling".

The only reason I'm personally against Political Correctness Gone Mad is because there's a reason we scrubbed that trope of Real Life examples. But like I said, as long as we're mentioning what it's "perceived" to be and not trying to imply that any actual beliefs are 'extreme" or "performative", I have no real objection.

Like I said, slacktivism is only one of the multiple connotations the term took on. It was a very old blog ("fucknosocialjusticewarriors" or something like that) that has likely been lost to the Tumblr NSFW ban, and comes from a person who has since disavowed the term due to its hijacking from rightists.

Edit: fucknotumblrsjw was the name and the blog itself is still up but it scrubbed the vast majority of its examples, and the handful of remaining posts link mostly to accounts that are dead. It should be noted that some of the remaining posts may espouse viewpoints that are now seen as dated because it's referring to ten-year old discourse from before Society Marches On. But the OP did leave up a post referring to how one of their goals was to document examples of people using the cause of social justice as an excuse to spout intensely hateful and bigoted, "extreme" rhetoric of their own. Slacktivism doesn't come up.

I don't know, I'm more inclined to believe the two articles that researched and cited the origins. There's also this thread which questions that it originated from Tumblr at all (although, they mention the blog "sjwar", and I don't know if that's related).

EDIT: At this point, I've said pretty much everything I wanted to, so I think consensus can figure things out from here.

I prefer AlleyOop's proposal, it's more concise.

To avoid the pothole, here's a rewrite of the rewrite:

• Terms like "Social Justice Warrior" ("SJW" for short) have risen to accuse people of taking political correctness too far.

The rest of the junk in that sentence about Tumblr can go. Not sure about all the alt-right stuff since that's at least using terms that I believe movement uses for themselves.

On second thought, I’d actually prefer the term not be used on the page at all.

The pothole contains useful information, and since we're discussing perceptions of things (and thus media in some fashion), is still valid.

Honestly, I can go either way on the pothole...but I honestly can't see what information is useful enough to make its inclusion beneficial.

Also, at times like this, I'm very wary of this site taking itself too seriously as an authority on any complex subject. I'm somewhat less skeptical with Useful Notes pages, but even those have occasionally fielded questionable information as this very query attests.

Should this move to a discussion page since this is getting too long for ATT?

It's discussions like these that make me want to enact a "no ATT threads about individual examples" rule. Anyhow, I've removed the entry and will close this query; further discussion can happen here including readding the entry if folks desire.