That is such an absurd and reductionist dismissal of this election that is no different than the equally wrong people saying "59 million people liked all the old sexist, homophobic, racist and xenophobic attitudes, and 59 million other people didn't"
What you are doing here is just perpetuating the problems that have plagued this election cycle and made it so people are completely unable to discuss real issues.
Start with a reasonable statement. Back that up with some interesting facts. Then drop a bomb in the room and wait for the aftermath. Pretty nicely crafted, all things considered...
Could be, but personally I'm done with being silent and just chuckling silently to myself or rolling my eyes when people pull out these infotainment zingers disguised as "insight".
The last year has ripped covers off the culture war that the US has been slowly boiling in like a frog. BLM and Trump aren't one offs, there are tons of people with serious gripes in this country, and for myself I'd rather call out the BS that obscures this than just sit here and let it stand unchallenged.
Could be, but personally I'm done with being silent and just chuckling silently to myself or rolling my eyes when people pull out these infotainment zingers disguised as "insight".
I agree. Throwing a derogatory zinger out there like "SJW" (which is unquestionably a dog whistle... anyone who would claim otherwise is being dishonest) does nothing to enhance public discourse, and it's about time we all worked to recognize and discourage that kind of behaviour while we all try to have honest, forthright conversations that help everyone understand each other a little better.
It's not just that, it's also the people who want to trot out "hur hur hur, only uneducated people voted for Trump"
I'm just so sick of all the navel gazing going on between the Bernie or Bust'ers, the Establishment Dems, the NeverTrumps, the Pro-Trumps, the Libertarians, and on and on and on.
Every last one of them is pushing some absurdly reductionist hot take argument in their bubbles and papering over the real issues plaguing people.
I'm as liberal as they get, but Trump appealed to a broad demographic. Reducing it to "uneducated whites" does a disservice to the very foundations of American democracy, as it dismisses out of hand the very real concerns of nearly 50% of the American electorate.
It would behoove everyone, including those in the media and the political system, to step back and get in touch with the values and concerns of those folks. Without that, the US is only going to become more polarized... and I'm not sure how much longer that can go on.
Come on, "SJW", "trigger word"? That right there is loaded language to begin with. And you can't explain the Obama/Trump voter with the SJW angle. To me the most telling statistic was how many people that voted for Trump believed him to be unqualified.
The divide is clearly between insider vs outsider, and dissatisfaction with the status quo. For me the Dems got caught with their pants down because Trump is so despicable as a human that they deemed him unelectable. But they got blind-sided because Trump's message resonated so strongly with half the country that his personal flaws were beside the point.
What does SJW mean to you? Just someone who cares about social issues, or someone who only pretends to care for self-serving purposes? Or something else?
I really dislike that term, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what exactly people mean by it.
is a pejorative term for an individual promoting socially progressive views,[1] including feminism,[1][2] civil rights,[1] multiculturalism,[1] and identity politics.
Are you really going to claim that you weren't aware of this when you threw that term out there?
>Let's all admit SJW has a clear, negative connotation. I mean, geez, it has a Wikipedia page:
Many of them also own up to the term and use it to refer to themselves in a positive manner, even placing it in their Twitter bio's next to a link to their Patreon.
Anyone who actually spends any amount of time in the political sphere where SJW run rampant is aware of this. Someone like myself uses it with the full negative connotation implied, because every SJW I know is a self-centered narcissist. But go ask the Twittersphere SJW's if they identify as a SJW and many will say yes. They see nothing wrong with it at all, after all they're in the right. They claim the moral high ground so how could being a SJW be a bad thing? "Oh, you're calling me a not-racist, not-sexist, not-misogynist? How is that a bad thing again?"
Anyone who is distanced from that political sphere but might know some college-aged SJW crowd could easily see and use it as a "positive phrase".
> Anyone who actually spends any amount of time in the political sphere where SJW run rampant is aware of this.
I have been reading up on politics or engaged in political discussion online for maybe ~4 hours daily for the past two years. I have never seen "SJW" used non-pejoratively, and I've never seen anyone own the term and apply it to themselves. Not saying you're wrong, but it's not nearly as common as you're pretending.
When I have access to my bookmarks later today, I have no problem providing countless prominent individuals in the "SJW Sphere" to prove my point that they use it positively and someone less engaged could easily see it as a positive term.
>I have been reading up on politics or engaged in political discussion online for maybe ~4 hours daily for the past two years.
The exact opposite of not being politically engaged and having the few times you've seen the term be in a positive usage...
I've been actively against SJW's and every niche they try to get their grimy paws on for the past four to five years. Almost all of my political engagement has been contrary to SJW talking points - not because of what they argue for, but because of how they go about it.
I use it negatively and have no issue with saying I do. I'm around crowds that exclusively only use it negatively. I also see it used positively, or at least tongue-in-cheek all the time. If someone uses the term and claims they did not mean to use it with negative connotations - I believe their intentions.
I'm not pretending it is common. I'm declaring it can be, is used, was used, and has been used positively and neutrally and that people still do so. Prior to #GamerGate turning it into a slur the Wikipedia article even mentions it was a positive thing. It's very easy to not be actively aware of #GamerGate or TiA (TumblrInAction) and outside of those two bubbles you're not very likely to even run into the term "SJW".
sickbeard denies the intent and claims to have viewed it in a neutral, if even slightly positive, light. Arguing otherwise is dishonest and viewing things from your own viewpoint. Projecting intention where there is none. Ironically that is something people are sick of SJW's doing. And yes, I used it negatively there.
> The exact opposite of not being politically engaged and having the few times you've seen the term be in a positive usage...
Not sure what you're trying to say here.
I honestly don't care that much about any of this. I know that there are people like you who hate "SJWs", but really what a weird thing to get riled up over. My political engagement has been entirely contrary to the war-profiteering, plundering, pro-corporate elites that run the world, but by all means you keep going after those evil college kids and feminists!
My apologies. People who are not politically active (eg: casual Facebook browsers) will never, ever come across the term "SJW". They may have seen it a few times. If they're college-aged maybe they have a friend in college who describes themselves as a "SJW" in a positive light. 1-2 interactions with SJW's using "SJW" as a positive term is enough for them to see the term in a positive/neutral way, as opposed to the way heavy internet users who scour Twitter for hours a day and are active in the #Gamergate hashtag will see the term "SJW".
If you browse Github, HackerNews, /r/TumblrInAction, or Twitter frequently then your chances of running into the term "SJW" increases as does your chances of seeing it used in mostly a negative way.
To then assume that everyone "knows" the term is a negative one when it's sphere of influence is a few small niches of the internet is being dishonest. Especially when that person denies said accusation.
>My political engagement has been entirely contrary to the war-profiteering, plundering, pro-corporate elites that run the world, but by all means you keep going after those evil college kids and feminists!
Why not both? Dangerous elites are only as dangerous as the public allows them to be. How many singular elites can kill thousands or millions of people without people to do the killing for them?
History has a historically thin line between "these people are bad" and "these people are bad and we should round them up and kill them". When people actively use the rhetoric of the latter, I listen and grow concerned...
To then assume that everyone "knows" the term is a negative one when it's sphere of influence is a few small niches of the internet is being dishonest.
Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup.
I have very little faith that sickbeard didn't know full well that he was employing a dog whistle when he dropped "SJW" into the thread.
>The reclamation of the term has spread to people who have never had it used upon them, and as a result, it is seen by many social justice advocates as a legitimate and accepted label for people who promote social justice. This has, in many circles (for example, Tumblr), heavily mitigated its pejoration, and consequently, heavily increased its positive usage by SJWs themselves
Okay, actually this is boring. You don't care and have already convinced yourself - abandoning the principle of charity. So we'll leave it at this I guess.
Riiiight. So because the n-word and the f-word have been reclaimed by their communities, I shouldn't assume that folks not in those communities aren't still using the term in a derogatory fashion?
Please.
Go back and read the original post. SJW was not being used with a positive connotation in context, and to suggest otherwise is just being willfully stubborn simply to make a point.
Are you really comparing "nigger" to "SJW"? One started off as derogatory and still is except within it's own community. The other started off as positive and became derogatory only within a few, niche communities. A more apples to apples comparison would be "Tea Partier". It became a political slur to call someone a "Tea Partier". Do you not think people use "Tea Partier" without the negative connotation when referring to someone in the Tea Party?
A Google search for `site:news.ycombinator.com sickbeard + SJW` only results in this comment thread. It was their first usage of the word on this site. Which means they have no historical basis to judge how they used the word. They even gave you the description: "To me it it means you believe in something and you're going to stand up for it."
I did not read it with a negative connotation, otherwise I would not have responded to you.
> History has a historically thin line between "these people are bad" and "these people are bad and we should round them up and kill them". When people actively use the rhetoric of the latter, I listen and grow concerned...
This makes sense. Sorry for being overly confrontational in my last post. I do agree that the language and tactics used by the far-left (which I'm very much a part of) can be silly or even slimy at times. I certainly took issue with the language that liberals used to describe conservatives in this most recent election.
Overall though, knowing quite a few people from college who are stereotypical SJWs, they are mostly harmless. A lot of them really do have a rough past, and aren't the privileged "special snowflakes" that the alt-right makes them out to be. Many people like the idea of a trigger warning, for example, because they really did experience something deeply traumatic, but you'll never discover that about them by hurling insults. And also many of these people tend to be socially awkward, and when I see people lashing out online about "tumblrinas" or whatever, it just feels like a continuation of the bullying that these people probably faced in childhood.
I think you missed the point of my post. We live in a distortion field, but it's not because our beliefs are wrong, rather we underestimate how many people don't share it.
Pre election they were all over trump. post election they have completely flipped and are blaming democrats/hillary/etc. When in reality we have a near perfect balance of competing views
Recognizing a cultural divide is fine, labeling one side new age SJW's and the other side racists bigots doesn't do that though. It just polarizes us even more and actively moves us further apart when we desperately need to start looking at ways to come together.
That is such an absurd and reductionist dismissal of this election that is no different than the equally wrong people saying "59 million people liked all the old sexist, homophobic, racist and xenophobic attitudes, and 59 million other people didn't"
What you are doing here is just perpetuating the problems that have plagued this election cycle and made it so people are completely unable to discuss real issues.