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Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here! Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!
What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?
I don’t know what “discourse norms” are, but I think you mean something like “how should people talk to each other”. I think you should speak clearly as you can; you shouldn’t try to guess what the other person’s thinking, that never works; you shouldn’t try to make anyone angry but you shouldn’t take it personally if they get mad anyway – some people just like being angry.
Sure, I think everyone should follow those rules, it’d be nice. Why? Because getting ideas out of my head and into yours, or vice versa, is pretty hard. People should respect that fact. You should talk like you expect to be misunderstood, anytime you have something to say more complicated than “I’d like fries with that”. If you want communication that never creates misunderstanding or offense, you want a computer and an exceptionally obedient programming language, not two human beings flapping their mouths.
What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?
I believe in empricism. If you want me to adopt your clever solution, show me evidence that it works. If you want me to believe people are bad, point me at concrete things they’ve done, not symbolic tokens or their identity.
But today’s “social justice” is all about symbols and tribal identity. You’re suspect if you’re a white man. You’re suspect if you use the wrong words for trans people. You’re suspect if you have the wrong politics. You’re suspect if you wear the wrong T-shirt! And when I say “suspect”, I mean “you deserve to be hounded by a mob of thousands, and driven to weeping repentance and the loss of your job.”
What kind of “justice” is this? It looks to me more like revenge — or bullying.
If your movement thinks it’s a great idea to hound people for wearing the wrong T-shirt — to force a programmer out of his job because you don’t like his politics — to scold and shame people for their language, instead of their deeds — that doesn’t look like justice to me.
I’d love a world where your odds of a good life were as high if you were black as white, and where women (and men!) didn’t have to fear rape. That’s a “social justice” I’d gladly support.
But the “social justice” I see people pursuing isn’t about measurable improvements in people’s lives. You don’t have proposals for concrete progress and you don’t bother to inspire with success. You focus on enemies, and not real enemies but symbolic enemies, helpless unsuspecting “enemies” you can gang up on and attack, for the sake and satisfaction of bullying.
As far as I can tell, it makes SJWs feel good to punish in the name of justice, and therefore they find an endless list of things that deserve punishing. They care about condemning me and my kind for an ever-shifting parade of supposed ‘microaggressions’ that mysteriously, untestably, allegedly add up to real-world effects — and there’s always something else we’re supposed to do before we’re allowed to ask to see the proof it makes a difference.
I don’t approve of injustice. I think your movement has forgotten what that word actually means.
What would convince me I’m wrong about the movement? That social-justice types aren’t just picking fights but have a justified crusade — that there really are huge fixable unfairnesses, and that’s what they care about?
That’s easy. You just need to show me activists who are pushing for concrete interventions, not symbolic displays of repentance for sin — and show me those interventions work.
I’d love it, for example, if social-justice activists were agitating on behalf of not T-shirt decorum, but, say, a replicable intervention that made immigrants from a low-performing ethnicity achieve the same kind of incomes as immigrants from high-performing ethnicities. That would be great.
But the irony about SJWs is that they seem to care a lot more about symbolic stands than concrete proposals — and they’re willing to persecute people like me right out of our jobs, on no evidence that those symbolic gains even matter.
Let’s face it: there aren’t going to be any studies showing that a workplace without “microaggressions” is achievable, because that would mean admitting that sometimes not everything white men do is terrible. The goalposts will just keep being moved. But if there ever were a study of microaggression-free workplaces, I really doubt it would be shown a cost-effective tool for improving the lives of women or minorities.
But honestly, if it did, I’d accept it. If you can win black people $10,000 of benefit at the cost of $5,000 of effort from an equal number of white people, sure, let’s go for it, I can bear the cost. I want a world that works well for everyone.
Unlike you in the social-justice movement, though, I think you have to actually look at the costs and the benefits. It’s wrong to think “he’s a white man, so we don’t have to think about any suffering he experiences, it’s deserved, no matter how small the gain to us.”
That’s just the logic white people used to do terrible things to black slaves for their convenience. “We’ll take away all your security, just to make our lives a little bit more comfortable.” When it was white men doing it, it was the logic of persecution. You’ve just reversed it.
But reversed persecution is not justice.
Explain Gamergate.
The SJWs think symbols are super-important, so for them it’s terrible if nerdy white men are having fun in a way that doesn’t ritually honor diversity and repentance. That sounds snarky, but I think it’s pretty much true. It’s like that old line about “a Puritan is a person terrified by the fear that someone, somewhere may be having fun.” As far as I can tell, a lot of social justice insanity comes from taking symbols way too seriously on way too little evidence.
So obviously the social-justice activists were going to home in on computer games. Computer gaming is full of cheerful play violence and play sexuality, played by a lot of nerdy, symbol-incompetent white men.
Gamergate was the inevitable collision of SJW power and fan power.
Core fans were enraged to find their opinions of what was fun were getting second place to a bunch of outsiders’ opinion about what was morally uplifting. How would you feel about being told you “shouldn’t” like chocolate and “should” like peanut butter? Then the SJWs were enraged, in turn, when they discovered their control over elite media figures didn’t automatically turn into control over ordinary fan opinions. Because unlike movies or TV, computer games is still a genre where Reddit commenters can bear as much weight as paid professionals.
I don’t think gaming companies should be pushed to slant or censor their work for millions of fans to please a bunch of self-appointed morally crusading outsiders.
I also don’t want anybody harrassed or threatened for the sake of their free speech, including SJWs. But I have to tell you I would feel safer saying that if I’d ever heard any respect from all of you for *my* free speech concern. How much I am supposed to invest in protecting activists’ speech when your very cause is censor the speech I care about?
Because dozens of women activists harrassed are visible and millions of gamers handed censored work are invisible, you think only the first is worth caring about, when they both are, and they’re both bad. But you – you aren’t willing to multiply by that “million” to reckon seriously the damage your side is doing.
Who needs to multiply when you can condemn Bad People and feel like a hero? That’s how social justice activists seem to think.
I think you need to take your math seriously, and count your victims not just your rescuees — even when your victims don’t come from your chosen tribes of the Noble Oppressed Backgrounds. I really wish I could convince more of you of that.
Toggle said:
Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. Prime ASJ vintage, very good year.
The tone feels spot-on, the dissent is properly focused on methodology, rhetoric, and signalling, and the author explicitly endorses the general values of anti-racism but treats those values as commensurable rather than sacred. If it’s real, congrats on clarity, and if it’s fake, then I’m glad to know that some SJ-types understand their opponents so well. Voted sincere.
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philosoraptorjeff said:
Nitpick: One thing can’t be “commensurable” any more than one thing can be “diverse”. I know what you mean, though.
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Toggle said:
Thanks for the tip. I think I probably picked up that usage from the phrase “everything is commensurable”.
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Elzh said:
Ooh. Quite a good tone, good perspective, and valid complaints. Probably authentic ASJ.
Especially here:
Good points and echoes objections to a lack of intersectionality and in general tolerance in the sj community common among, say, the unit of caring and SSC.
It doesn’t address what would convince the author otherwise viz. methods and consequentalist metrics of success, though.
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wildeabandon said:
I’m very confident that this is a real anti, but it feels like the sj they’re attacking is a strawman, so I’m really curious about which of the pro essays it matches up with, and whether that manages to be convincing.
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Autolykos said:
It maaay be a strawman if we only talk about the brand of SJ found here or in the circles around it. But that’s a rather atypical sample. An admission that there are some great people out there who do SJ right would have made this very good article perfect. It can be forgiven, though, because the vast majority of opinions thrown around is pretty much exactly of the described variety, or worse – and because part of the task could be understood as “rounding yourself off to one side”.
If this one isn’t a true Anti, there is someone on the SJ side who *really* gets it, and I commend them.
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Murphy said:
Someone can like and respect the kind of people who they hang around with on their home message boards even if they follow wildly different creed or political positions while still detesting the sort of people who swarm twitter and youtube in their thousands nominally following the same creed.
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user1235612 said:
Definitely voting Anti on this one, most confident I’ve been so far. If an SJ wrote this, hot damn. Very polarized and forceful without seeming at all like a strawman or parody.
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Katelyn Ailuros said:
This is either a real anti-SJ who doesn’t get SJ in the slightest, or a fake anti-SJ whose model of anti-SJ begins and ends at “doesn’t get SJ in the slightest”.
Which doesn’t help me vote, on account of the fact that both of those are pretty darn common :V
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John said:
Pretty similar to my own opinion. The failure to mention Zoe Quinn tipped it over into “fake” for me, but the comments have led me to believe I was mistaken.
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memeticengineer said:
pro-GGers (correlated with but not identical to anti-SJers) aren’t actually obsessed with Zoe Quinn. At least not any more. She’s like the Archduke Ferdinand of GamerGate. Mentioning her or failing to mention her isn’t a very good tell.
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Ishigyyyy said:
I’m an anti and I wouldn’t mention Zoe in my description of GG. I just don’t think it’s important to what GG was actually about at its core.
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dndnrsn said:
I wonder why WWI is the go-to metaphor for GG.
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Glen Raphael said:
Could you elaborate a little bit on what they’re not getting about SJ?
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jdbreck said:
I voted that it’s genuine anti, and I feel very certain. Starts off reasonable in part 1, and then parts 2 and 3 make me want to argue with it point by point and mischaracterization by mischaracterization.
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memeticengineer said:
Extremely realistic. If it’s a fake, it’s so good that it deserves the “real” vote.
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dantobias (@dantobias) said:
It seems real to me. Pretty well-written, though it’s not likely to convince any SJ people, especially given that it uses the pejorative “SJW” label, which is a big turn-off to them.
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Fisher said:
I actually first encountered SJW as a self-appellation, by some really terrible people who were justify their horrible behavior. (Think Arthur Chu, or go read old posts on the A+ forums) The people who first used this term were the reason it became a pejorative.
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rash92 said:
I feel like it’s a very convincing fake. But i’m not sure. The gamergate section seems weird in what it chose to emphasise and seems like something where a pro-SJ was struggling to think of any valid points an anti-SJ could have so took what they could get and use the dust specks argument on it.
Also i think a lot of their arguments against SJ are probably bits and pieces that a pro-SJ person is annoyed by that they listed, and they chose an angry tone to make it seem more authenitc.
I voted pro-SJ but very close.
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MugaSofer said:
It’s very well-done, but key details are off.
Claiming you’d be convinced if literally anyone on the SJ side was working to help people in concrete ways, when it’s extremely obvious that women’s shelters and the like exist? Probably written by an SJ person who feels genuinely ticked at too much “symbolic” stuff and is exaggerating that into a version that isn’t aware the “good stuff” exists.
Saying that harassment is acceptable to fight censorship? Major mistake. I’ve literally never encountered a pro-GG person who didn’t think they were the real victims of harassment.
There’s some other minor stuff. I’m a little suspicious that a reader of this blog claims not to know what a “discourse norm” is, for example. The constant “you”. Only being able to name two examples of SJ hurting people before resorting to “etc.”
I wanted to believe; this is a vision of anti-SJ that’s basically just good SJ opposing all the most un-SJ of the SJ movement. I can respect that. I’ve talked to anti-SJers who are like that.
But I don’t believe this is one of them.
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
Did they say harassment was acceptable? It’s more like they said “harassment exists and is wrong, but is just not the important issue here”.
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MugaSofer said:
Yeah, I phrased that poorly.
They frame it as “yes, my side is the one attacking you [essentially unprovoked], and that’s nominally bad, but I don’t really care because your side was criticizing/censoring us.”
I’ve never seen a GGer do this. No mention of anti-GG harassing GG people, or arguments that the harassment was mostly fake/exaggerated? Really? Not even going to complain about being stereotyped, mention #notyourshield, mention ethics in game journalism?
This essay totally concedes that the anti-GG factual claims, most of the anti-GG argument, is 100% correct. The only dispute is over how to tally the result; that fighting sexism is actually bad, so GG in the right.
It’s rather like reading an essay by a Palestinian that never mentions Israel has bombed Palestine, then argues Palestine does rightfully belong to the Jews but really all property is theft. Or an essay by a Republican that mentions Catholic attacks on Protestants, but not vice-versa, then argues ethnicity matters more than good government.
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
@MugaSofer
Yea, I think the most typical GamerGate line on harassment is one of the following:
“It’s third party trolls” I think this is somewhat true but mostly not true.
“It’s wrong, it’s a problem, but you can’t expect us to answer for any asshole who uses our hashtag, and it shouldn’t derail our legitimate points”. I think this is fair.
“The Literally Who’s are fakers and exaggerators”. Probably not true, and it’s uncharitable to assume they are. On the other hand I do think SJ as a whole exaggerates the seriousness of online harassment, treating it as almost as serious as actual violence, which it usually isn’t.
“They’re harassing us too, why are we the ones that get all the blame”. True, though it’s probably true that more harassment comes from the GG side.
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Aapje said:
I think that the best GamerGate line on harassment is:
– Overall, the amount of harassment was only a fraction of the messages sent (GGers spent a lot of time analyzing twitter messages to prove this)
– A decent portion of the harassment was by trolls
– A decent portion of the harassment was false flag operations (there is strong evidence for some instances of this and common sense is that the cases with strong evidence are merely a small portion of total false flag cases).
– Assholes exist, but it is completely unfair to define a movement & dismiss their concerns by focusing their worst people.
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QuickSilver said:
“Claiming you’d be convinced if literally anyone on the SJ side was working to help people in concrete ways, when it’s extremely obvious that women’s shelters and the like exist?”
I think the that OP is saying they would be convinced if SJ activists were working to help people in concrete ways, not people aligned with SJ people.
I wouldn’t, I don’t think the OP does, think of SJ activists as responsible for women’s shelters. At least in my case that might be tautological, if one’s focus is on substance over style I’m not sure I would consider one an SJ activist.
I guess one would have to convince me that I’m largely mistaken about the people I consider to be social justice activists? That they actually care about substance over style.
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MugaSofer said:
Damn, you’re right, OP might well have thought that. Updating a bit toward them being genuine.
The remainder of this comment is a rant.
… we’re on a blog run by a genderqueer trans gender studies major. If zie isn’t SJ, it’s hard to imagine who is. Our host routinely posts about Effective Altruism, to the point it’s one of this blog’s main topics.
At the opposite end of the scale, it’s very common on Tumblr for people to post “I’m a [minority] in [trouble], help!” and receive help and/or donations. (Although it occurs to me that this might not seem like as much of a Stereotypical SJ Thing to people who are less SJ-peripheral than me and don’t run into it as often, I assure you it occurs.)
In between those two extremes are a wealth of charitable organizations of varying effectiveness, whose members strongly identify as SJ. Suggesting your definition of the term is highly atypical to say the least. (Even if you ignore the original, Christian definition of the phrase, which basically means “helping people”.)
Here’s a few examples of very explicitly SJ women’s shelters, at random from google: http://ernestines.ca/how-to-help/social-action http://www.guidestar.org/profile/54-1282756 http://acommunityforpeace.org/
Being really absurdly leftist, even in deeply toxic ways, is not incompatible with helping people at the same time.
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tcheasdfjkl said:
Also like, SJ people are often working towards very concrete political goals, like increasing abortion access, increasing the minimum wage, instituting anti-discrimination laws, preventing transphobic bathroom laws, etc. You may well disagree with some of those goals, but they are surely substance. Unless you only accept charity work and not political work as “substance”, but in that case you should just be against all politics, not against SJ in particular.
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Aapje said:
@MugaSofer
I see Ozy as an extreme outlier in the SJ sphere, without real impact on the cultural war, so I can see how people consider them and their ilk irrelevant in the context of this struggle.
As for it being a rant, some anti-SJ people genuinely feel under attack for their identity. I’ve seen a ton of pro-SJ’ers rant about oppressive men/white people/etc and (sometimes) justify discrimination, so this is the logical result on the other side, where people rant back for perceived discrimination against them.
@tcheasdfjkl
IMO, the point of the writer was that causes are adopted for how they comply with SJ dogma, not whether they actually work.
In the writer’s (rationalist) argument, substance require solid evidence of efficacy. Doing acts with good intent, but without solid evidence that they may work, is virtue signalling.
I think you have a fundamental difference with the writer when it comes to the necessity for acting based on evidence. Furthermore, you are probably a lot more positively disposed about the positive effect of the SJ efforts and consider the negative effects less important.
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tcheasdfjkl said:
@Aapje
It’s certainly true that I’m more positively disposed to SJ than the writer (assuming the writer is sincere), but other than that I’m really not sure how you’re coming to these conclusions about me? I was disagreeing with QuickSilver’s assertion above that it makes sense to define SJ in a way that excludes people who care about “substance over style”.
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Aapje said:
You are focusing on the goals, not on the methods with which people try to achieve them. However, a substantial goal doesn’t mean that the methods are automatically substantial.
Let me try explaining with an example. Some people believe in abstinence-only education. However, we have strong evidence that such education fails to achieve the goals (few teen pregnancies).
Even though I agree with the goal, I think that the method fails to work and as such, the method lacks substance. It is no more going to work than waving a magic wand.
So…I can agree with a goal….I can agree that a person earnestly tries to achieve that goal and yet….I can consider their methods to lack substance. Their methods are not solid in a scientific manner, where one has a rational reason to believe that their actions leads to their goals being achieved.
One can make a similar argument about certain SJ methods.
I hope this makes it more clear.
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tcheasdfjkl said:
@Aapje
I don’t think abstinence-only education is primarily motivated by a goal of preventing pregnancies, but that’s sort of a side point. Mainly I just think you have a really weird definition of “substance” and I would be surprised if many others share it.
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Aapje said:
Perhaps the phrasing is different from how others would put it (or at least, your tribe). However, I think that the basic idea is shared by a decent number of people:
It boils down to what you value most: intent or actual results.
If you primarily judge an action by intent, you’ll respect incompetent people who try to do the right thing but fail. If you primarily judge an action by actual results, you won’t respect this that much.
If you think that some people don’t merely fail, but actually make a situation worse and that they ought to know better as there is already evidence that their solution can’t work, then one can be very harsh, if one has high standards for humanity.
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tcheasdfjkl said:
Liberalizesd abortion laws are an “actual result”. An increased minimum wage is an “actual result”.
What further consequences these things have is of course up for debate. But they themselves are substance.
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Aapje said:
I think that these are not end results, but tools to achieve something. The actual effect of the abortion laws for real people is the end result, not passing a piece of paper. Less poverty is the desired end result, not a higher minimum wage in itself.
Of course, the creating the tool is also an actual result, but it is still just an intermediate result.
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jossedley said:
I think we’re down to criticisms so fine that they might catch real people’s sincere opinions, especially since these essays are somewhat space limited and since there’s no dialogue, so we can’t clarify what the author means.
In this case, I don’t think the author meant to imply that they would be “convinced if literally anyone on the SJ side was working to help people in concrete ways” (such as working at shelters as MugaSofer points out.).
It sounds like the author sees the essential characteristic of SJ as sustained confrontation with patriarchy/ white male culture/ etc. – mobbing people for wearing the wrong shirt or pushing to shift video games in the hope that one or both will make society more equitable. The author says that evidence that those interventions make people better off would be convincing.
You’re right that SJ people also work to feed the hungry, etc., and I imagine the author would say that so do ASJ people, so that’s not a defining characteristic of SJ from the author’s perspective. (Which sounds a little bit like the No True Scotsman fallacy, but then again, the author is addressing a personal perspective, and also I’m making all this up, so maybe the essay means something else!)
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Subbak said:
Voted fake for the same reason. It seems the author just fished around SSC for arguments against the SJ movement and repeated them many times with an angry tone. I was at no point surprised by what they were saying (even if I didn’t agree with it), and I wouldn’t expect to be able to follow the thought processes of a real anti-SJ.
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Fisher said:
Considering women’s shelters predate the SJ movement by a few centuries, I doubt the OP is willing to give SJ any credit for them.
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MugaSofer said:
How about LGBT shelters, then?
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Fisher said:
How about LGBT shelters, then?
Well, considering the anti-T policies that some women’s shelters have… maybe?
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Aapje said:
@Fisher,
Especially because the first shelter was set up by a woman who became an anti-SJ advocate (Erin Pizzey).
In general, the argument by anti-SJ people seems to be that the shelters (and anti-DV programs) were hijacked by feminists. So in their view, SJ made the DV effort worse, not better.
@MugaSofer
I’ve read a ton of stuff in the SJ sphere and I can’t recall them ever coming up as a topic (neither by pro- or anti-SJ).
Then again, I’m not particularly interested in the LGBT topics, so perhaps there is a parallel, non-mainstream discourse where this is big.
PS. Which percentage of gay people actually spend time in a LGBT shelter?
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
I think this is real. There’s a few bits that made me go “ick”, like comparing to slavery. Compare SJ to McArthyism, sure. Comparing to slavery sounds ridiculous, because it is.
Also saying literally no SJ activities are worthy. BLM is worthy, at least in its CampaignZero form. Abuse shelters are worthy, but of course they totally neglect male victims. SJ isn’t literally the opposite of truth and justice.
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karimpootam said:
Are the things you listed that made you go ‘ick’ also what convinced you it’s real?
Because those are precisely the arguments that made me tip over to thinking it’s fake. I expect anyone who’s been reading thingofthings long enough and are anti-SJ to have a bit more understanding of the worthy SJ side. 🙂
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
No I think it’s real despite the ick parts. I’d be more confident if they weren’t there.
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tcheasdfjkl said:
So was there a pro-SJ entry compatible with “I don’t know what “discourse norms” are”?
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argleblarglebarglebah said:
I voted pro [actually I voted anti by mistake this time, but I meant pro] because this seems like a very shallow position. They keep talking for a long time but about the same thing, and it’s a thing that they’re, frankly, objectively wrong about. I just can’t believe that this is a real person.
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dantobias (@dantobias) said:
Your saying this person is “objectively wrong” is about as arrogant as the previous writer who claimed to be objectively right. Too much in the culture wars is subjective in nature to make it reasonable to declare any commentator objectively right or wrong.
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Walter said:
I continue to be a garbage judge at having an opinion on ASJ posts.
SJ Judges, do you find these measurably easier than you did the SJ posts?
This person is doing a very good version of the “disappointed that SJ isn’t real SJ” version of ASJ. I buy it.
Walter’s ASJ Responses:
#1: ASJ, certain
#2: ASJ, certain
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dndnrsn said:
Convincing anti, of the sort who exists in an “internet bubble” – there are certainly people who would say they are “social justice” people who are doing concrete things, but there’s probably little overlap between someone going around distributing warm clothes to people living on the streets and people who have lots of time to burn on Twitter. But an anti online isn’t going to be running into those people.
If this is a pro pretending to be an anti, a really good job indeed, because this hits most of the right notes without seeming either phoned-in or over-the-top.
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Donbas said:
The fact that this entry frustrated so many SJs is the best indicator that it’s a genuine anti.
This is how we really see you guys. Maybe if we step back we see that it’s not a very charitable or fair characterization, but on a gut emotional level, this is how we react to SJ. I think there’s just such a big divide between us and how we see each other and how we see the world. It’s why these conflicts are so passionate and interminable.
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
The difference is when SJ people think about their movement they think about the highest expression of their ideals, and when we think about it we think about the lowest example of their behavior.
If either side sits back and thinks about it charitably they’re able to see that the core ideals are good and a lot of the behavior is bad. The real disagreement is about things like what the current state of the world is, what kind of behavior is an acceptable way to change it, what kinds of concepts and reasoning are applicable, and some kind of absurd collectivist tally of who done wrong and who been done wrong to.
At least that’s the disagreement between pro and anti-SJ attitudes outside the extereme right. We’re all for “equality”, we just disagree on what that means. Neoreactionaries are off to the side talking about Carlyle hoping someone will pay attention to them.
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Toggle said:
It’s not so much that I only recognize the ‘low’ and ignore the high. It’s that the whole shebang gives even very bad behaviors a free pass as long as they can’t be construed as reinforcing oppressive power structures.
I’ve lost count of how many times a kind, well-meaning social justice type of person tried to stop abusive behavior by arguing, “I know you think you’re just targeting cishet white men, but you might also be accidentally harming someone with [x disability]. Therefore, please stop doing that cruel thing.” I’m glad that someone is trying to stop cruelty, but at the same time they’re reinforcing the idea that cruelty is fine, as long as only the right sort of people suffer. It matters that it’s so rare for anyone in those circles to argue that human suffering is bad, full stop.
The immediate consequence is that the most pertinent elements of social justice are the actions of the worst 2%, because they have carte blanche to indulge their most malicious impulses. That tends to outweigh any good intentions by the people enabling them.
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
@Toggle.
yup!
I would add that I think we all put way to much stock in “high ideals” and “terminal. values”. Your instrumental values are your real values. Terminal values are mostly platitudes and puffery. If your terminal value is “equality”, but your instrumental values are McCarthyist and collectivist, then your values are crap.
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imperfectlycompetitive said:
I think this is a common problem. When people with differences of opinion interact by arguing online, each side disproportionately sees those people on the other side who argue most vociferously. Zach Weinersmith gave the phenomenon a somewhat fanciful illustration some time ago. (I might have even seen someone link it on this site before). http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
@imperfectlycompetitive
I think what that leaves out is that each side tends to minimize, excuse, and defend their own crazy assholes. The majority of the “non-crazy” part of the side does this, which obliterates their moral credibility in the eyes of the non-crazy part of the other side.
For example gamergaters will say things like “I don’t condone harassment but I don’t feel sorry for Anita; she brought this on herself”. If you don’t feel sorry for her, just don’t mention it. To the SJ side that sounds indistinguishable from endorsing harassment. Don’t minimize and excuse your own assholes.
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tcheasdfjkl said:
@Larry
This has been a difficult and important lesson for me. It’s partly difficult because sometimes the silly or just bad criticisms of SJ sound similar to the legitimate criticisms of SJ at first blush – and of course because it’s hard not to feel personally attacked when people speak poorly of a group you are in and care about. (Which, yes, I know, is itself a common criticism of SJ.)
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jossedley said:
I voted anti. This is either pro or a great fake.
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jossedley said:
Whoops – i mean it’s either SINCERE or a great fake.
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yashfa2 said:
This feels fake. Like, it feels like what an SJ person would want anti-SJ to feel like. The parts that aren’t reasonable are too ridiculous to be true and the entire thing feels at odds with the reasons most people oppose social justice imo.
here’s why I think it’s fake:
1) No mention of religion. Most anti-SJ people I know are heavily motivated by religion. A huge part of the anti-transness and anti-queerness I’ve experienced has been via heavily religious people.
2) Arguing against a way people use social justice isn’t an argument against the principles of social justice. So this is a cheap way to create an enemy who doesn’t actually disagree with you. Most pro-SJ people have issues with this aspect of SJ, so it’s just the old strawman technique of “oh my enemy actually agrees with me since my principles are so perfect.”
3) empiricism seems wildly at odds with being anti-SJ. Again, the majority of anti-SJ people are religious. Also empiricism would lead to a focus on believing narratives and statistics, something that seems wildly at odds with the anti-SJ positions that trans people don’t exist, gay people need to be cured, racism is not a problme in America, etc.
4) characterizing SJ as “everything white men do is terrible” is laughable. I don’t think anyone really believes this. Pro-tip to the SJW who wrote this – you’re trying to make a real human being, not a Captain Planet villain.
5) Bringing SJ into gamergate when most of the pro-gamergate side made the argument that it was about ethics in game journalism. It feels like a mistake to openly admit that Gamergate was anti-human and anti-woman. And people who think this is real… have you literally read this quote?:
“Because dozens of women activists harrassed are visible and millions of gamers handed censored work are invisible, you think only the first is worth caring about, when they both are, and they’re both bad. But you – you aren’t willing to multiply by that “million” to reckon seriously the damage your side is doing.”
This is literally a social justice argument about whiteness turned on its head. I wouldn’t expect most religious/anti-SJ people to know enough about social justice to make this analogy.
6) This is such an important point that I need to bring it up again: to not mention religion as a major source of belief is contrary to every anti-SJ I’ve met – most of them Muslim, some Christian and quite a few Jewish.
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tcheasdfjkl said:
I’m pro-SJ and I strongly disagree with you. In the rationalist-sphere there are lots of anti-SJ people who are not at all motivated by religion and very motivated by empiricism (as in, they believe that many factual claims of SJ are false, and they think SJ is unconducive to good empiricism); outside the rationalist-sphere too this is absolutely a thing – my Russian-immigrant parents are another good example (I’m not totally sure they’d call themselves actively anti-SJ but they’re certainly actively not pro). I think you come from a really different bubble than I do, and yours might be more representative of the country as a whole, but there are things outside your bubble (and I think my bubble is more representative of the people who are likely to read this blog).
Also, “anti-SJ” doesn’t have to be “against the principles of social justice”, it’s completely reasonable for it to be “against the movement as it currently exists” if one thinks the current SJ movement is overwhelmingly terrible.
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yashfa2 said:
You are right about religion. Without finding reliable statistics, I estimate that the presence of high religiosity is still a >1 Bayes’ factor but not as large as I initially thought.
If it is the case that the majority of differences between SJs and anti-SJs are in different empirical studies, we’re in luck since empiricism can enables us to find the correct beliefs. So I hope you’re right, so that we can either convert or be converted by empirical anti-SJs (I’ll be honest, most anti-SJs I know tend to have emotional arguments to defend racism, sexism and homophobia with no reference to empiricism except the oft-discredited statistic about homosexuals and child molesters). Differences in terminal values are a lot trickier. Many of the anti-SJ people I’ve met have had very different terminal values. I hope I’ve just been meeting a minority and yours are the majority who live in the world.
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jossedley said:
That’s one interesting thing that has turned up so far. As far as I can tell, a large segment of the SJ commenters here see SJ as “Racism is bad; trans people are ok” while a lot of the ASJ commenters see SJ as “It’s OK to shout somebody out of discourse for making problematic Steve Universe fanart or making the argument that dressing cross culturally for Halloween serves a defensible purpose.”
An optimist would say that we have a lot we agree on …
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yashfa2 said:
I guess that makes sense? I will acknowledge that talk of a social justice “movement” doesn’t really make sense to me – there’s various feminist movements, BLM, queer rights’ movements etc. but they don’t generally come under the same umbrella and there is generally a good deal of infighting within the umbrellas (for example, as a ‘movement atheist’ I oppose Islam as a religion/idea and liberals I know use this opposition to paint me (and other ex-Muslims) as anti-Muslim and exclude us from their social movements). For that reason, it doesn’t make sense to me to think of SJ as anything but a web of intermeshed ideas about oppression and justice in society, some of which I disagree with. I assume people who identify as SJ agree with the core of social justice ideas and people who identify as anti-SJ disagree with the core of social justice ideas (for example, working to cause trans people to commit suicide like some people I’ve met on 4chan). Even now, I can’t quite figure out what anti-SJ people mean by “the social justice movement” because I don’t know of anything so monolithic. If someone could clarify, that would be appreciated.
There are a significant number of people in the US who are against trans people existing and who believe racism is solved or is okay (a substantial part of the population is just “old-school racists” who people forget exist – this isn’t to say that they are a lost cause either, based on experiences my friends have had working with them).
On the note of religion, I did forget that there are atheist parts of the alt-right which is anti-SJ and that there are people from the former Soviet Union, so I was a bit short-sighted.
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yashfa2 said:
To be honest, the idea that shouting people down for minor transgressions is bad and that call-out culture has come to a point where it does more harm than good seems to be common knowledge, if not mutual knowledge, among most SJ people I know. It’s very revealing when nearly every SJ person I know says that they think callout culture has gone too far in private.
Of course, my friends and I might not be representative (largely being software engineers) – that would give even less of a reason to believe in a unified “social justice movement”
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
@yashfa2
“web of intermeshed ideas about oppression and justice” in other words, an ideology.
You keep talking about “core principles”, and I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that but I’ll assume you basically mean humanism and equality.
You seem to be unaware of the possibility that humanism and equality are not the exclusive property of your own ideology. You seem unaware of the possibility that someone could disagree with every distinctive feature of your ideology, and be just as as committed to humanism and equality as you are.
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philosoraptorjeff said:
“To be honest, the idea that shouting people down for minor transgressions is bad and that call-out culture has come to a point where it does more harm than good seems to be common knowledge, if not mutual knowledge, among most SJ people I know. It’s very revealing when nearly every SJ person I know says that they think callout culture has gone too far in private.”
They might say that among themselves in private, but in public my experience – including with friends and family members well into adulthood, not just kids I don’t know on Tumblr – has been quite different. As long as you keep it abstract, some SJ people are willing to admit these things – but as soon as you point to a specific example, or suggest it’s become common enough to actually be worth worrying about, they close ranks and make excuses for the behaviour, at absolute best they’re like “well, I disagree with this person but I understand where their anger is coming from” with a very, very strongly implied “and the people they hurt were mostly white males and therefore don’t really count anyway” lurking just below the surface.
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philosoraptorjeff said:
…. wow. All I can do looking at this is wonder if you’ve *ever* read *anything* remotely rationalist-adjacent arguing an anti-SJ position. I suppose it might be possible in principle to come up with something less like an accurate description of rationalist-adjacent anti-SJ that was still distinct from SJ itself, but it would be really, really hard.
Let’s start here, though: being against racism (for example) does not make one pro-SJ. In fact, I’d say many people oppose SJ as it currently exists *precisely because* they have a more principled and consistent anti-bigotry stance than many of those who characterize themselves as pro-SJ; too many of the latter just seem to want to swap in new acceptable targets to replace the old ones, not to do away with the whole concept of acceptable targets.
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yashfa2 said:
I should clarify – I don’t think being against racism makes one SJ: one needs to be against racism for its own sake and not because of other reasons. Someone who is against racism because they don’t think the scant evidence that HBD “scientists” have shown is sufficient is obviously not an SJ given that their position is malleable.
I will also clarify that I’m not really rationalist-adjacent. I just like Ozy’s blog because they seem to best approximate my beliefs and the subject of their posts well-approximates my interests (trans issues, effective altruism, autism). I occasionally peruse Scott’s blog too though I obviously disagree with him quite a bit, being of a left-wing persuasion myself. Disagreements over AI risk and generally not finding the sequences persuasive or getting a lot out of the ‘rationalist’ community is a major reason why I’m not a more active part, as well as the obvious distaste for the alt-right and discomfort with debates on trans humanity (I’m perfectly all right with debates on transhumanity OTOH – let’s live forever guys, it’ll be fun).
Some more background if you want:
I don’t generally peruse anti-SJ perspectives regularly anymore, but I was pretty steeped in social justice criticism while I was a closeted trans woman in the Muslim community. I also heard a lot from evangelical ‘friends’, so I think I have a good idea of what anti-SJ is. To describe my understanding of anti-SJ, I consider archetypal anti-SJWs to be Ted Bundy and Phil Robertson – patriarchs with a strong religious backbone and strong convictions some of which run contrary to my beliefs. Don’t get me wrong – I respect Amon Bundy’s right to protest and I believe that they actually believe what they’re saying. I just disagree with them. Other notable anti-SJs include Milo Yianoppolous, a guy who is against trans people and who led a harassment campaign against an actress for the audacity of being black and starring in a movie with female leads (Don’t blame SJs for changes to Ghostbusters in the remake – blame the market. Ghostbusters remake was a financial success). I also knew a girl who identified as anti-SJ but as far as I could tell that was just a youthful rebellion against the excesses of SJ-identified activists on our college campus and she switched back to identifying as a liberal after leaving (Not classical liberal – she would not defend free speech / criticism of Islam without exception, despite being white and atheist). From what I can tell, anti-SJs have a different, more traditional, set of targets.
Anyways, my response to your claim:
I’m not sure your definition of anti-SJ is as prevalent as the pro-racist vision of anti-SJ, either (if you can show some evidence suggesting that it is, hats off to you – but there is a significant minority of the US who literally believes black people are inferior to white people/oppose interracial marriage and, no offense intended, your vision of anti-social justice sounds like something that would appeal mostly to the coastal elites (of which I am one, considering that I am currently working as a software engineer)). I would say that if your issue is merely with the idea that SJ activists sometimes replicate elements of oppressive culture, then I don’t see much difference between your anti-SJ position and some anarchist SJ positions except that they give very different connotations. Insofar as social justice replicates societal oppression, I oppose it. I will acknowledge that social justice is a wide enough umbrella to encompass those who disagree with me on this point. I could be wrong, but to abandon social justice altogether for a solvable disagreement seems to me to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater indicating a lack of serious commitment to social justice principles in the first place. I would be fine being proven wrong as to the existence of principled anti-SJ that doesn’t reduce to believing in oppression or really being SJ in values.
I’m in a sufficiently stable mental place that I can read more, so I would appreciate you sending links. I did follow a bit of anti-SJ thought on tumblr for a while and mostly found it to be variations on the theme of “haha these SJ guys are accommodating to people different from them, let’s laugh at them” and “wow this random tumblr user said something shitty, let’s represent her as all of social justice and attack her viciously.” This seems to be in contrast to your post where you seem to claim that anti-SJs have no special belief that racism is solved, etc.
Anyways that’s all my thoughts. I look forward to hearing any response.
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
@yashfa2
Your perspective at least seems comprehensible to me now. You seem to be equating anti-SJ with the the right. All the examples of anti-SJ people you mentioned and unambiguously on the right. And I guess that makes sense because right-wingers are going to be anti-SJ by default. SJ inherently part of the left, so of course they’re against it.
There’s also plenty of anti-SJ within the left, as well as even more anti-SJ libertarians.
For example: Majid Nawaz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, Karen Straughn, Gad Saad, Julie Bindel all come to mind as public figures who have spoken against various aspects of SJ without being on the right.
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absurdseagull said:
not entirely sure how to write responses on this site so this is a response to Lawrence D’Anna to clarify.
Your perspective is interesting because I hold up people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali (her in particular) as my model for social justice – after I left Islam, she was a major inspiration for me. I always considered Ali a major social justice figure by fighting against Islamism and FGM.
Can you list out your definition of Social Justice? It’s hard to define I know – I guess mine would be:
“The belief that inequality driven by society is wrong and that people ought work towards ending it. Further, if natural inequality is able to be remedied by technology in such a way as to increase the total standard of living, it is morally desirable.” This is a fairly broad definition aiming to capture the different facets – I purposely left it vague enough for both neoliberal and leftist interpretations of social justice. The last sentence is specifically to capture issues relating to disability and transness (not saying that transness is a disability).
My personal view of social justice, which ties into transhumanism and anarchism: “The belief that inequality in all forms is bad, though societal inequality is worse than ‘natural’ inequality, and the belief that one should work towards remedying this inequality by universalizing the treatment of those best served by society and nature to the extent that is possible.”
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absurdseagull said:
Of course, I do think some of Ali’s positions are somewhat too illiberal, though understandable (the use of government to prevent Islam, although emotionally appealing, seems to be a bit of an overreach – I am also swayed by the argument that banning burqas (not niqab, but burqa) keeps women in conservative families from engaging with the outside world, therefore making them more conservative). I want to clarify that I don’t universally agree with the authors you listed but would not classify Ali or Nawaz as anti-SJ. I have some misgivings about classifying Julie Bindel as pro-SJ but this might be just an emotional response because I am mtf and used to be a radfem ally (had a lot of self-hate). Definitely just an emotional response because I have no similar misgivings towards Alice Dreger despite her transphobia because I initially encountered her advocacy for intersex individuals.
The reason I would classify them as SJ is because their critiques seem to me to have occurred in an SJ context. As much as I would love to dismiss Julie Bindel, Alice Dreger and the like under “no true SJ” fallacy, I don’t think it’s that easy.
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
I’m really not sure how to answer.
I don’t think it comes down to a statement of principles like you laid out. Not high-minded far-mode stuff like that. Social justice is more specific, more contingent than that. For example, there’s no way I could take your description and without knowing the state of the world figure out that social justice is pro-Islam and anti-Christianity. It’s an accident of history.
I thought of some glib ones like:
SJWs are the ones that go around denouncing people as bigots, anti-SJ are the people who get denounced.
SJ is collectivist, anti is individualist.
SJ thinks injustice happens groups, anti thinks it happens to people.
SJ say “privilege” and “marginalized” and ASJ says “free speech” and “human rights”.
But those feel a little too self-serving and they don’t really capture it.
I’d say social justice is relatively cohesive ideology. It’s a civic religion that has a coherent set of positions about who’s privileged, who’s marginalized, what that means, and what should be done about it.
Anti-social justice is a ragtag assortment of everyone who’s got a problem with that ideology. And that varies enormously from gamers who don’t like they way SJ critics ax-grind on video games, to notorious right wing trolls like Milo, to old-school feminists like Julie Bindel who don’t like the way feminism has changed, former leftists turned free-speech advocates like Dave Rubin, Muslim liberal reformers like Maijid, MRAs like Karen who are worried about male victims of domestic abuse, and on and on. The only thing they have in common is they’ve somehow found an enemy in social justice.
That’s not to say social justice is completely a unit, that all SJ people think alike, just that well, it’s closer to being a unit than the anti side is. By a lot.
Totally agree with you Julie Bindel has some problems. I didn’t mean to imply I agreed with everything all those people say. That would be impossible anyway because Julie Bindel and Karen Straughn probably don’t agree on a single thing.
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tcheasdfjkl said:
@yashfa2
What I’m getting from this is that your social and political experience is really different from most of the rest of us in this thread. So we have really different ideas of the prototypical anti-SJ person.
I know that there are lots of conservative religious people in the U.S./in the world, but I basically don’t know any. Instead, the anti-SJ people I know fall mostly into two buckets:
(1) my Soviet-immigrant parents and their friends, who (a) have a collective aversion to social justice language and any kinds of appeals to duty to make the world a better place, because of the way these things were coopted and made compulsory by the system they grew up in (b) are somewhat conservative compared to the liberal area I live in (basically I am gradually dragging my parents into LGBT acceptance – they don’t have a well-defined ideology that opposes it like conservative religious people do, they just don’t exactly have a place in their worldview for it) (c) are white and well-educated and mostly have friends from their own social group so they’re not directly exposed to certain other kinds of problems, but also are disproportionately Jewish so I think sometimes they’re kinda like “in our day we had REAL oppression”
(2) rationalist-ish anti-SJ people whose values are actually quite close to mine, who largely disagree with me on empirical questions about the world or about what SJ is – see others in this thread, or the OP for a good example of one such view, or SSC. (You could argue that some such people “should” be pro-SJ because they have basically the same views as some of us, but I think that’s rude and unnecessary, and anyway they could argue the same thing about me. (I admit that the existence of such people makes my own choice of identification sort of close to arbitrary, though not exactly arbitrary.))
I think you’re right that religious conservatives are more numerous than either of these groups in the U.S. as a whole. But this ITT isn’t drawing from the U.S. as a whole, it’s drawing from people who read this blog, which is a highly unusual sample. For this sample, I think that it’s more likely than not that zero of the genuine anti-SJ entries will be motivated by religion, and almost certainly not more than one or two.
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Aapje said:
@yashfa2
I consider myself a progressive anti-SJ and my position boils down to this: I think that most of the SJ movement is not seeking real social justice. For example, I believe that mainstream feminism defends part of the patriarchy, like women taking care of children, women being treated as hypoagent and men as hyperagent, exaggerating the violent nature of men and downplaying it for women, etc, etc. I believe that all ‘-isms’ are multidirectional and when treated as unidirectional (group X oppresses group Y, but never vice versa), it reinforces the unfairness in the other direction. In itself this wouldn’t be so bad (it’s selective advocacy for some, while ignoring the interests of others and thus can’t solve the problems), but the tendency to oppress advocates who could provide balance to the discussion is what makes me believe that (these elements of) SJ must be fought.
As Lawrence noted, the disagreement among progressives is not on ‘equality’, but more on what equality means. There is a huge difference between believing in equality of outcome and equality of opportunity.
Pretty much all of SJ seems to assume that all groups are biologically equal and that unequal outcome is thus proof of oppression (and forcing equal outcomes is just). In my view, the evidence strongly suggests the opposite and if people are different, then it’s actually unfair to force them into equal outcomes. This in the same way that it would be unfair to force half the birds to live in the sea and half the fish on land.
It’s interesting that you noted HBD, because I think that it exemplifies this. In my view, it’s perfectly logical that ethnic groups may differ in intelligence*, as we know that ethnic groups have genetic differences (like tolerance for dairy or likely hood to get certain diseases or skin color). It’s perfectly possible that some groups have selected more for intelligence than others, either because their culture makes it more likely for smart people to procreate and/or because the environment rewards intelligence rather than strength more.
However, as I’m only concerned with equality of opportunity, it’s actually completely irrelevant whether it is true. If every person with a certain IQ is able to study, then I’m happy. If Jews are more intelligent on average and thus a relatively high number of Jews will study, that is fine with me. Everyone is then at the place that is merited by their ability.
However, it is not necessary for my ideology that certain ethnic groups are more intelligent, nor is it necessary for it not to be the case. It is truly irrelevant.
This is not true for right-wing racists, who don’t want merit based policies, so their ideology depends on biological differences. However, the same is true for people who believe in equal outcomes, although mirrored. Their ideology depends on a lack of biological differences. Hence, I believe that both groups simply cannot accept certain scientific outcomes and will use whatever rationalizations they need to defend their belief system (as I believe that people cannot abandon a belief system without adopting another, as having a void is unbearable).
So…my primary concern is that (SJ) people accept the idea of equality of opportunity as that allows for open-mindedness.
* Note that I’m just open to the possibility and not claiming anything either way.
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Nita said:
@ Aapje
1. So, you don’t think women should take care of children by default, yet you also don’t think we should care about unequal outcomes? How does that work?
E.g., suppose that Peter wants to be a stay-at-home dad, and Mary wants to be a stay-at-home mom. Their spouses happen to be employed in the same field and have equal salaries.
Unlike Mary’s husband, Peter’s wife needs to take time off work due to pregnancy and childbirth, so, by the time both couples’ kids are old enough to attend school, Peter’s family will be significantly worse off economically. Does this outcome bother you or not?
(Consider that, a few generations later, culture will catch on to this, and pragmatic parents will forcefully dissuade their daughters from marrying men like Peter.)
2. Look at this list of hypothetical situations:
a) a child is at risk of low IQ due to malnutrition;
b) a child is at risk of low IQ due to severe physical abuse;
c) a child is at risk of low IQ due to a rare genetic mutation, but a cheap food supplement would solve it;
d) a child is at risk of low IQ due to a rare genetic mutation, but a future medical treatment could solve it;
e) a child is at risk of low IQ due to a genetic mutation common in their ethnic group, but a future medical treatment could solve it.
Are you against developing and implementing effective interventions — morally, as a matter of principle — in any of these cases? What does it mean to provide equal opportunities?
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Aapje said:
@Nita
I was thinking more about post-divorce situations, but…
Well, I think that single provider families are fundamentally problematic. There are also cultural and biological factors that can compromise the male provider, for example, men are more likely to get killed in work accidents, by violence and in general die earlier. In that case, Mary’s family will be a lot worse off than Peter’s family in the childbirth case. In my country, we more or less abandoned the single provider model by reducing the ‘widow pensions’ & alimony. It makes a lot more sense to me to default to the position that adults should try to take care of themselves as much as possible. The classic SAHM model declares mothers incapable of working and fathers of caring; which is the opposite of equality. Unfortunately, divorce court still far too often tries to maintain the SAHM model after divorce, rather than find a new optimal solution. Mainstream feminists, like NOW, support this, which is why I consider them partially patriarchal.
If people do want the luxury of staying at home (man or woman), then I don’t see why society has to fund that or fix the issue that it is slightly easier for women than men (biologically), beyond:
In my preferred government system, there is decent parental leave (for both mothers and fathers), as well as universal health care (all the current universal systems have big wealth transfers from young -> old and men -> women, btw). So this will already decrease the extra cost for female providers who become pregnant quite a bit, certainly compared to the USA situation.
There is already a very strong negative reaction by society to stay-at-home dads, so culture doesn’t need to catch on, it did. Of course, not because of your reasoning, but because men are generally not allowed to be hypoagent. The more interesting question is why men with no huge interest in having children are right now willing to marry stay-at-home moms and whether reduced pressure on them to be providers will make them far more ‘pragmatic’ in the future.
I’m in favor of effective interventions in all of these cases and to me, they are all about providing equal opportunities.
To me, forcing equal outcomes is, when in the absence of a solution, we force colleges to take kids with low IQ because their group is underrepresented. Then the kid with low IQ will be out of their depth and be miserable, because they cannot cope.
We’ve seen this in the past with affirmative action, where African-American with lesser scores were allowed in over higher scoring groups and as a result, these groups performed worse in college, dropped out in huge numbers, moved from STEM to less lucrative fields, etc (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-painful-truth-about-affirmative-action/263122/).
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Treblato said:
I’m pro, voted pro. I just feels a tad milquetoast and waffling for some reason.
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Fisher said:
Sincere
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Aapje said:
I’m anti and 99.9% convinced that this is anti. This is a very good representation of a progressive anti-SJ person who feels that his values are under attack by what (s)he would call the regressive left.
It’s also stated in a way that most SJ’s would probably hate.
The reason for this is that it focuses on the problematic elements of the other side and the better parts of the anti-SJ movement, while most SJs would have the opposite focus.
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The Unists said:
I love this post!! You’ve got great personal insight and seem to deal well with these often bizarrely formulated questions. If you want to see our understanding of what truly makes someone an SJW, check out our post “Feelings of Inferiority: Self-Hatred is a Leftist Trait.” Hate to plug so shamelessly, but we’re interested in what people think of our reasoning. Again, amazing post!
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ozymandias said:
Friend, this post was written by an SJW.
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The Unists said:
Oh… um.. really? Dammit.. really? Did I miss something by the writer (meaning the answers responding to the bold questions) constantly referring to SJWs as “they” and “them” and “the SJWs” instead of we, us, and us SJWs? And also the idea that SJWs don’t normally refer to themselves as such,but as activists? I’m sure you know better than I do, but idk where that leaves us.. are you making a point that someone who identities as an SJW doesn’t actually have to conform to any of the accepted criteria for what an SJW is? Like saying “I don’t go to church or read the bible or believe anything in it, am I a Christian? – Yes, friend”, like is this a rebranding attempt or something?
And we’re talking about the same post,right? The one that says, “But today’s “social justice” is all about symbols and tribal identity. You’re suspect if you’re a white man. You’re suspect if you use the wrong words for trans people. You’re suspect if you have the wrong politics. You’re suspect if you wear the wrong T-shirt! And when I say “suspect”, I mean “you deserve to be hounded by a mob of thousands, and driven to weeping repentance and the loss of your job.” ” that sounds like someone definitely trying to distance themselves from everything SJWs are , as the writer clearly seems to acknowledge, most known for?
Sorry, I don’t mean to be obstinate, but I don’t get it! :S
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Nita said:
This post is part of a game called “Intellectual Turing Test”. The task is to express the opinions of your opponents in such a way that other people can’t tell that you aren’t one of them. (The idea is that doing well at this game requires truly understanding the other side, or at least being sufficiently familiar with its ideas.)
Here are the author’s actual opinions, in case you’re interested: https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/itt-social-justice-17/
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jossedley said:
I know it isn’t in the rules, but as far as I’m concerned, Topher now deserves credit for winning the ITT. 🙂
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