U. of Chicago tells SJWs to shove it

[Alyrium Denryle]

Surely not letting white dudes in also means they aren't getting the support white guys can provide. They're are cutting out an entire group of allies, a notably numerous, well connected, and powerful group.

Seems like maybe a catch-22 possibly. Try to get the gay male support and they get overrun but if they don't get the support they risk getting overrun because of a lack of resources.

Allies are only allies if they actually assist you. If they dont--if they instead harm you--they are not allies.

Which is why when I have money I gladly donate to trans activist groups, but I dont go to meetings and try to vote.

[ray245]

I love it when people who haven't experienced trauma to the point where they feel the need to isolate themselves tell the people who have what they should and shouldn't feel and ridicule them for needing a place where they can feel halfway comfortable. I mean they go so far as to mock people who have or had severe traumatic experiences as "Social Justice Warriors" )and what's wrong with wanting social justice, anyway?). This is just a case of "I don't care, turn your frown upside down".

Generally, SJW is used to term people who can be a little extreme in how they view racial problems, like this little incident.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 37911.html

The co-founder of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign has refused to apologise for his comments to a white South African waitress, adding they were not personal but necessary to disrupt "whiteness".

Ntokozo Qwabe, a South African postgraduate Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, caused outrage after saying on social media he had made Cape Town waitress Ashleigh Schultz cry “typical white tears" after he wrote on a cafe bill: "We will tip when you return the land".

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I suppose it's "problematic" due to lack of context? I'm referring to social authoritarianism and social libertarianism in the political sphere. There's a world of difference between "please don't do that, you're upsetting me" and "nobody should be allowed to do that, because it might upset someone".

Yes, I already knew you were using that compass. I understand the Standard Political Compass or whatever they call that thing, you don't need to explain it to me.

The problem with the Compass is that it distorts things because it doesn't have enough dimensions. It collapses a whole bunch of different things onto the "authoritarianism" axis and a number of things onto the "left/right" axis. Some of them don't really belong together.

So as a tool of political analysis, it serves very little purpose except for allowing libertarians to feel smug.

Gandhi'll ask you to leave the commune if you don't knock it off, while Stalin will shoot you and ship your family off to Siberia. Now, the differences we're dealing with here are rather less stark than that, but it's on the same axis. Libertarians will call you an asshole for being rude, but admit that you might have a point if the facts support it. Authoritarians will try to get you fired from your job and blacklisted from your industry, because you're one of those filthy -ISTS and shouldn't be allowed to exist in 2016.

And here, this circles back. There are two important points I (and others) are making here about the kind of abuses attributed to "Social Justice Warriors."

One is that these abuses tend to be much rarer and milder than they are made out to be. A lot of the time, the people who are yelling "Shame! Shame!" will settle for an apology. And yet it's made out to be the Great Political Correctness Apocalypse.

The other is that very real version of these abuses are already happening with minority groups as the target. Where saying "I'm a woman who got date-raped by Popular Jock Man" results in you being hounded out of society. Where saying "I'm from a racial minority, and I don't disown that, I am who I am" means you're that extra fraction less likely to have a good career. Where standing up and saying "uh, I'm a homosexual, and I'm not a demon" can get you beaten to death in an alley. Where even standing up and saying "uh, I'm straight, but homosexuals aren't actually demons" can endanger your job. This happens to lots of people every year.

Now, if the people who sling "SJW" around all the time were in this to attack overreaction, you'd think they would talk about these overreactions too. In general, they don't. If they were in this because they think it's bad for hypersensitive people to destroy someone's life... well, it's pretty damn hypersensitive to beat up gays in alleyways because their existence offends you.

Because this is not about overreaction. It's about people who are upset that someone standing up for traditional target groups finally has enough muscle that they start resisting the bullies. And, as a consequence, someone made them bleed their own blood.

But just because its happened to one group of people doesn't mean its okay for members of another to have the same thing happen (which I'm not implying that is what you are implying). As infantile as it might be to say, bad shit happening is bad no matter what. Also water is wet and Trump is a cunt.

The point here is that which groups of people we choose to protect says a lot about our priorities. If our priority is to prevent suffering, we protect all the people Nelson Muntz likes to beat up. If our priority is to protect the status quo, we protect Nelson Muntz from getting a nosebleed.

There is a systematic attempt by the Muntzes of our society to trump up "Social Justice Warrior!" as an ugly stereotype for everyone out there who might threaten to stop them from having their fun. Before that term came into being, there were other similar terms like "Political Correctness!" that served the same purpose. But those started to get discredited when people realized that "politically incorrect" was basically just your racist uncle's excuse for saying racist stuff at the dinner table. SJW-slinging is on the same path, it's just going to take a few more decades.

So I say, cut out the middleman and recognize the problem sooner rather than later.

Thing is, you say all this stuff like 'History students know about genocide and torture. Biology students know about how rape affects evolution in animals. Psychology students know about how they'll be discussing incest and serial killers."

Except we learn about this in college...

My college experience was shorter then a Hollywood star prison stay and I'm not exactly the brightest bulb in the toolshed and yet I was mostly aware of that shit. Though to be fair I also read a crapton as a youth though I'm relatively certain little about evolution and biology or psychology.

That at least to me seems like some incredibly basic shit that even a high school student should know. Not detailed files on the inns and outs of animals going in and out or how serial killers weren't breast fed as children but a general understanding of what those subjects might cover.

A general understanding of a subject does not equate to knowing all the seamy stuff associated with it. Knowing "entomologists study bugs" is not the same as being aware of "which includes parasitic whozits that lay eggs inside your eyeballs which then hatch and eat their way out from the inside."

We can't expect everyone to be in the top 5-10% of the population when it comes to their willingness to research and know in advance everything that might bother them about a certain course of study.

Now this isn't me saying or typing or projecting words onto my screen with the power of my MIND!!!!! that there shouldn't be warnings for course with shit that might disturb. But I am saying that some of the responsibility should fall on the shoulders of people getting into the stuff.

And since no one actually said "no responsibility should fall on those shoulders," I fail to see why there's a problem you need to worry about here.

There are plenty of people whose idea of free speech includes their right to call gay people by homophobic slurs, to express aggressively ignorant and derogatory opinions of minorities, and (if male) to routinely insult women and expect them to like it.

Well part of that is part of free speech. Sucky as it might be part of free speech is allowing bigoted morons to say bigoted moronic shit. Free speech guarantees the rights of assholes like the Westboro church to go and say some of the most vile and disgusting shit ever uttered from a human mouth since the invention of language.

Perhaps so, but another part of free speech is something called "time, place, and manner" restrictions.

Sure, you can say vile and disgusting shit. But you can't yell insults at a judge in a courtroom. You can't get a gang of your twenty closest friends together and jeer and throw paper balls at the weird unpopular guy every time he shows his face in public until he leaves town for fear you'll do something worse. You can't stand up in a university geology course with a megaphone and drown out the professor by demanding equal time for theories of the hollow Earth. Doing those things will get you arrested for contempt, charged with harassment, and dragged out of the room by campus security, respectively.

The right to free speech is not a right to prevent other people from having a safe and functional environment in which to live their daily lives. It is your right to say shit, not to do disruptive and abusive shit.

Moreover, yet a third part of free speech is that the things you say have consequences. If you bash the gays cruelly enough, maybe other people will decide that the gays make better company than you do, and usher you out the door while tolerating said gays. If you insist that women who got raped last week have no right to a place where they can just sit down and chill while coming to terms with their "now every man I talk to, I worry about whether he's another rapist" issues without having those issues blow up every five seconds... maybe other people will decide that if they have a choice between standing up for the rape victim and standing up for you, they'd rather not stand up for you.

What is going on here is not that people are being denied their right to free speech. What's going on here is that the people who complain the most about "SJWs" tend to be people who want to be callous, abusive jackasses without consequences. And that has never been a guarantee associated with free speech.

But some might say saying anything negative is harassment, just saying stupid shit like "I don't think gay people should be allowed marry because the bible" or "I don't believe people are born gay because clearly I know better then medical doctors and actual gay people". Could maybe be considered a bit insulting though not personally, as in its not directed at individuals, and stupid as fuck or atleast highly ignorant but is it harassment? Should it be stopped just because it might be insulting even though its not a malicious insult? How many licks does it take to get to the center of tootsie roll tootsie pop?

Thing is, something like 40 or 50% of the population thinks it's totally reasonable to say these insulting things, and does so routinely. While this isn't legally actionable harassment, it is a very real problem for gay people who just want to get on with their lives and concentrate on something other than dealing with insulting bozos. Especially because it's hard to tell which insulting bozos are just bozos, versus which of them are deeply closeted resentful weirdos who want to kill you in an alleyway.

At which point, this becomes a problem in places where people have to be able to concentrate on getting the job done, like a college classroom or a workplace. So it's understandable that someone may say "you know what, to hell with it, just don't insult gay people here. This is not a place for explaining why you think gay marriage is unnatural." So that the gay students and workers can have a life that consists of something other than defending their sexual orientation in front of the 3,782nd person who knows nothing about them and thinks they know everything about them.

I have less of a problem with single gendered programs like the example of a computer course but in some ways it could be considered problematic. Having a computer class only for women could be a good thing, no doubt is a good thing, because of the all too real problem of misogyny in tech circles both casual (like idiots thinking women are automatically less skilled at computers because they have vaginas) and overt.

But its somewhat of a problem because it implies the only way for women to learn is to exclude men, the only way for them to be safe is to not have guys around. In some cases that might be true but not always. It paints an entire gender as untrustworthy for the actions of a few.

Thing is, if we live in a society where this is true, or at least true sometimes, or where women aren't really particularly safe with men around...

Calling attention to that fact might be the best way to do something about fixing it. Trying to stop others from calling attention to it, by banning "no boys allowed" programs, isn't going to fix anything.

We wouldn't have any worry about "safe spaces" if society were, you know, safe. If people did not have to worry about random harassment and dickery just for being who they are. But making society safe is going to run into even more resistance than making safe spaces safe, so it's going to be a while before that happens.

Until then... I'm not going to give people shit for wanting specific places to be safe. Or for going kind of far out there to make that happen.

[Civil War Man]

2) No, they dont necessarily know those things going in. That is why they are in my class. I was odd, I was dissecting road kill when I was nine. Most of my students were premed and dont know the first thing about the natural world going in, or who are only in my class to meet general studies requirements. People who have been bionerds their entire lives are maybe 10%. That ratio gets better in the upper division classes, but it is still mostly premeds.

I think part of this can be attributed to something similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect. You can't really assess whether the contents of a class have material you would find disturbing unless you already know enough about the subject matter to know about the material you would find disturbing.

It's why I support redundant warnings. Including a disclaimer for common triggers in the major/course descriptions can help weed out students who would be unable to handle the subject matter so they don't end up wasting their time pursuing a course of study that they will have to change later because they can't handle the material. And giving the teachers enough leeway to issue warnings prior to covering sensitive topics, as you've frequently said, can help students who either didn't read the syllabus or can handle the subject matter as long as they have time to prepare themselves.

What is going on here is not that people are being denied their right to free speech. What's going on here is that the people who complain the most about "SJWs" tend to be people who want to be callous, abusive jackasses without consequences. And that has never been a guarantee associated with free speech.

There is a relevant XKCD comic I've seen posted on other sites whenever this topic has come up.

[Knife]

Read the thread and agree with most major points, except for the notion that labeling someone an SJW is somehow an 'alt right' thing. Plenty of left, left leaning, and centrists, along with the right, use the term. Generally speaking, it is usually used to describe people who have gone a bit over the top on far left ideals on a few specific issues, a bit like the label 'gun nut' for right wing gun lovers. Whether or not the label is accurate is a matter of who uses it in regards to whomever is espousing a certain idea, like most labels.

But to assume anyone using it is some sort of Alt Right (why is this a new term? These people aren't new nor is their ideas and their ideas are now mainstream within the right so it's not an alternative anymore.) is laughable.

[Elheru Aran]

Regarding the 'alt-right' label specifically...

No, it's nothing new. The only really new thing is the label, which has become a thing lately because they're a more prominent part of the political playing field now thanks to Trump. They used to be the fringe idiots who gave the GOP a bad name, now they're the fringe idiots who happen to be a bigger part of the GOP than it really wanted to admit and is trying to disassociate itself from at the same time as it's holding its nose and trying to fall in line behind Trump... the label is a convenient way to distinguish the movement from mainstream conservatism, which the GOP desperately wants to identify with.

[TithonusSyndrome]

The only people on the left I am aware of who use "SJW" in the pejorative sense - which is really the only sense it truly has anymore - are anarchists and Marxists and othersuch people who reject privilege theory as being insufficiently class conscious. A typical argument from that crowd might be that privilege theory does nothing to address the forces of capitalism at work beneath the scenes that subvert otherwise revolutionary forces built around social identities like race, queerness or gender into being just new consumable capitalist fads. Black liberation movements merely turned black identity into something "cool" to project in consumable media, like disco, soul and hip-hop music without actually advancing the interests of average black working class and poor people, they might say. A typical counterargument might be that such a person is being a "class reductionist", and so it goes. The truth probably includes elements of both perspectives.

If someone other than that is claiming to be ringing the bell about the dreaded SJWs on the left, you can be pretty well guaranteed that they're either naive and have gleaned together what little they know about the subject from the meme factories at 4chan and 8chan by way of Facebook and Youtube, or they're just plain dishonest concern trolls.

[Knife]

The only people on the left I am aware of who use "SJW" in the pejorative sense - which is really the only sense it truly has anymore - are anarchists and Marxists and othersuch people who reject privilege theory as being insufficiently class conscious. A typical argument from that crowd might be that privilege theory does nothing to address the forces of capitalism at work beneath the scenes that subvert otherwise revolutionary forces built around social identities like race, queerness or gender into being just new consumable capitalist fads. Black liberation movements merely turned black identity into something "cool" to project in consumable media, like disco, soul and hip-hop music without actually advancing the interests of average black working class and poor people, they might say. A typical counterargument might be that such a person is being a "class reductionist", and so it goes. The truth probably includes elements of both perspectives.

If someone other than that is claiming to be ringing the bell about the dreaded SJWs on the left, you can be pretty well guaranteed that they're either naive and have gleaned together what little they know about the subject from the meme factories at 4chan and 8chan by way of Facebook and Youtube, or they're just plain dishonest concern trolls.

LOL, or... while being liberal in everything else, don't agree with either the issue or application of the rhetoric of an issue for the narrow span of issues usually lumped together in the social justice movement. Low hanging fruit on that account would probably be the liberals or moderates who don't subscribe to the label of being a feminist while NOT being anti woman. Or freedom from religion without being atheist, or supportive of LBGT without being gay themselves. To boot, all the gibberish you wrote that equates to why others who don't believe the same as you boils down to a 'no true Scotsman' like rationalizations.

[TithonusSyndrome]

And why wouldn't they agree? Because they're "liberal" right up until it requires changes in behavior or thought on their part? Even to someone who does consider liberalism a "left" phenomenon, it shouldn't be hard to see that this is a cynical and self-interested take on political consciousness that barely even attempts to justify itself. Sure, you can argue all you like that you can be for "women's rights" without being a feminist, but I've never heard that argument framed in such a way that didn't attempt to depict modern frontiers in women's issues - like the issue of being taken seriously when claiming rape, or being forced to comport themselves pleasantly and attentively whenever a man pays attention to them - as somehow "illegitimate" when compared to the fight for universal suffrage.

[Knife]

So... it is a no true Scotsman with a touch of the Black Swan fallacy. Gotcha.

[TithonusSyndrome]

The only No True Scotsman Fallacy here is yours in insisting that you somehow have access to some more authentic definition of "liberal anti-feminism" that disputes mine which you're refusing to share.

[Knife]

Actually, my definition is developed from a diverse group ie: the right to the left and I spelled that out in my first post. Yours from a more narrow selection that dismisses disagreement by rationalizing it as "cynical and self-interested take on political consciousness that barely even attempts to justify itself".

That and the idea that 'liberal' is somehow an in or out state is ridiculous. Bernie is generally seen as more liberal than Clinton, for example, but that doesn't mean Clinton does not hold liberal ideas, nor does it mean all her ideas or positions are liberal.

[TithonusSyndrome]

You're attributing it to a wide group of people, perhaps, but you're not actually divulging their specific reasoning; you just offered a uselessly reductive "some people believe this" without addressing specifics. As long as we're exchanging elementary fallacies, I would like to know exactly where you think my definition comes from.

And I know this will probably come as a shock to you, but there is a firm discontinuity between liberalism and what is collectively known as "the left", no matter what is commonly repeated in American political news media. It is possible to straddle the line, as Bernie Sanders in his present incarnation does, but philosophically there is a distinction that my reference to "anarchists and Marxists" should have indicated to you.

[Dragon Angel]

And I know this will probably come as a shock to you, but there is a firm discontinuity between liberalism and what is collectively known as "the left", no matter what is commonly repeated in American political news media. It is possible to straddle the line, as Bernie Sanders in his present incarnation does, but philosophically there is a distinction that my reference to "anarchists and Marxists" should have indicated to you.

One of the weirdest things I've encountered is people who call themselves "liberals", while holding deeply conservative values and are center-right in politics at the very best. Such as, there are groups of Trump supporters who hold this doublethink. I have my theories as to why they would believe this, but I don't know if those are sufficient enough still.

But yeah, in circles I'm part of I've seen some leftists also bash liberals as well as right wingers. My specialty isn't politics so I don't know much about this, but it is what it is.

[TithonusSyndrome]

A lot of them are just telling themselves that they're hoisting liberals on their own petard by somehow rubbing their noses in the fact that they've "turned" on free speech. To them, they're just engaged in this clever GOTCHA maneuver where at the end, the "regressive leftist" in question is supposed to gasp in horror at what they've become, as though they hadn't already grappled with basic dilemmas about free speech like the classic "shouting 'fire!' in a crowded theater" example and arrived at some necessary and sound abridgments of the principle.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Actually, my definition is developed from a diverse group ie: the right to the left and I spelled that out in my first post. Yours from a more narrow selection that dismisses disagreement by rationalizing it as "cynical and self-interested take on political consciousness that barely even attempts to justify itself".

That and the idea that 'liberal' is somehow an in or out state is ridiculous. Bernie is generally seen as more liberal than Clinton, for example, but that doesn't mean Clinton does not hold liberal ideas, nor does it mean all her ideas or positions are liberal.

Actually what I think he is doing is making a distinction based on ideological foundations. US liberalism classical leftist politics are, while not unrelated, actually different things with different intellectual foundations. For the left, we are talking marxism etc, for US liberalism, the foundation is the the various progressive reform movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There was some historical cross-pollination with various forms of socialism (as distinct from marxism), but the two are different things. It is only the fact that the US political spectrum is single-axis that puts them on the same region of the spectrum.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Pretty much, thanks Aly.

I can't stop you from considering liberalism as "leftist" if that's what you really want to do, and I know how bizarre it must seem to an average American to consider the possibility that even conservatism is an outgrowth of that form of classical liberalism and therefore all American party politics are "liberal" in character, but if I had meant to comment on varieties of liberal anti-feminism in the first place then that's what I would have said I was doing.

[Knife]

Actually what I think he is doing is making a distinction based on ideological foundations. US liberalism classical leftist politics are, while not unrelated, actually different things with different intellectual foundations. For the left, we are talking marxism etc, for US liberalism, the foundation is the the various progressive reform movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There was some historical cross-pollination with various forms of socialism (as distinct from marxism), but the two are different things. It is only the fact that the US political spectrum is single-axis that puts them on the same region of the spectrum.

Fair enough. Chalk it up to colloquialisms from North America are different than Europe. Though, since he responded to my post originally, he should be mindful of American perceptions of such things and not necessarily another definition.

Also to note, my original comment in which he responded to did not once say 'liberal' and in fact said left, center left, middle, and right.

[TithonusSyndrome]

I'm Canadian, and our political histories have a fairly similar trajectory in this sense. Believe me, I'm familiar with how the terms are conflated in vernacular use and it makes me more than a little impatient.

Anyways, I guess as long as we're cataloging leftists who would dislike "SJWs", there's always the nazbols, but those are just red-painted fascists to me and in no way of the left.

EDIT: And as long as we're having an edit discussion about this, my original response didn't refer to 'liberals" once either. I was commenting on what I was familiar with myself - how the left engages with the "SJW" term and why. It was in your counter-reply that you introduced liberalism.

[Knife]

Sigh, I don't care man. I don't care in this instance of how you define or even if the classical or world wide definition of these labels are different than American ones because in this instance it is American politics and an American University's rules and regulations with American groups either pro or con on it. In this instance, it is American common usages that count.

And this odd divergence aside, my original point is and was that SJW is in usage in a wide swath of (American) political leanings and not an Alt Right thing.

[Flagg]

I love it when people who haven't experienced trauma to the point where they feel the need to isolate themselves tell the people who have what they should and shouldn't feel and ridicule them for needing a place where they can feel halfway comfortable. I mean they go so far as to mock people who have or had severe traumatic experiences as "Social Justice Warriors" )and what's wrong with wanting social justice, anyway?). This is just a case of "I don't care, turn your frown upside down".

Generally, SJW is used to term people who can be a little extreme in how they view racial problems, like this little incident.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 37911.html

The co-founder of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign has refused to apologise for his comments to a white South African waitress, adding they were not personal but necessary to disrupt "whiteness".

Ntokozo Qwabe, a South African postgraduate Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, caused outrage after saying on social media he had made Cape Town waitress Ashleigh Schultz cry “typical white tears" after he wrote on a cafe bill: "We will tip when you return the land".

It was used that way. Now anyone with an issue over some ignorant bigot of saying "that's gay!" as a negative is immediately branded as a SJW and their entire argument is shut down.

Oh, boo hoo hoo, I can't say "retard" anymore without people being offended!

[Rogue 9]

Well, it obviously bothered enough of them to spark large student protests over the last year and attract counter-commentary from archconservatives like Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, so v0v

Ummm... Greg Lukianoff used to work for the California ACLU and is a self-described liberal. What?

[Simon_Jester]

Read the thread and agree with most major points, except for the notion that labeling someone an SJW is somehow an 'alt right' thing. Plenty of left, left leaning, and centrists, along with the right, use the term. Generally speaking, it is usually used to describe people who have gone a bit over the top on far left ideals on a few specific issues, a bit like the label 'gun nut' for right wing gun lovers. Whether or not the label is accurate is a matter of who uses it in regards to whomever is espousing a certain idea, like most labels.

But to assume anyone using it is some sort of Alt Right (why is this a new term? These people aren't new nor is their ideas and their ideas are now mainstream within the right so it's not an alternative anymore.) is laughable.

I don't really think it's a right-wing thing. I do think that the people who use "SJW" most are the people who are themselves very, very sensitive to the idea that people who historically have been getting bullied might stop just passively taking the hits.

Because they're the ones who have a strong incentive to dismiss the whole category of "stick up for minorities" people as some kind of sad, radical lunatics.

It's sort of like how in the '60s, there were plenty of people who dismissed antiwar protestors as "hippies." It's not that there weren't "centrist" people who felt that way... but most of those hippy-denigrating "centrists" of 1968 became avid Reagan voters, and avid Gingrich voters, and if they're still alive are now avid Trump voters. They're not looking so "centrist" now. And it's not just that America's moved to the left while they remained still. It's that American public culture no longer shelters some of the views that they have always held.

People who can feel the underbrush they used to hide in shriveling up tend to get rather nasty about it.

[Flagg]

Read the thread and agree with most major points, except for the notion that labeling someone an SJW is somehow an 'alt right' thing. Plenty of left, left leaning, and centrists, along with the right, use the term. Generally speaking, it is usually used to describe people who have gone a bit over the top on far left ideals on a few specific issues, a bit like the label 'gun nut' for right wing gun lovers. Whether or not the label is accurate is a matter of who uses it in regards to whomever is espousing a certain idea, like most labels.

But to assume anyone using it is some sort of Alt Right (why is this a new term? These people aren't new nor is their ideas and their ideas are now mainstream within the right so it's not an alternative anymore.) is laughable.

I don't really think it's a right-wing thing. I do think that the people who use "SJW" most are the people who are themselves very, very sensitive to the idea that people who historically have been getting bullied might stop just passively taking the hits.

Because they're the ones who have a strong incentive to dismiss the whole category of "stick up for minorities" people as some kind of sad, radical lunatics.

It's sort of like how in the '60s, there were plenty of people who dismissed antiwar protestors as "hippies." It's not that there weren't "centrist" people who felt that way... but most of those hippy-denigrating "centrists" of 1968 became avid Reagan voters, and avid Gingrich voters, and if they're still alive are now avid Trump voters. They're not looking so "centrist" now. And it's not just that America's moved to the left while they remained still. It's that American public culture no longer shelters some of the views that they have always held.

People who can feel the underbrush they used to hide in shriveling up tend to get rather nasty about it.

I think there's also an element of them feeling as if they are somehow being left out, which, you know, cry me a fucking river. We "SJW's" want some small safe space we can go to when overwhelmed and are surrounded by people who "get it" or just to be alone when feeling that way. People who haven't gone through the shit most of us have, do have their own safe spaces, too. It's called 99.9% of the planet.

[Knife]

I don't really think it's a right-wing thing. I do think that the people who use "SJW" most are the people who are themselves very, very sensitive to the idea that people who historically have been getting bullied might stop just passively taking the hits.

Because they're the ones who have a strong incentive to dismiss the whole category of "stick up for minorities" people as some kind of sad, radical lunatics.

It's sort of like how in the '60s, there were plenty of people who dismissed antiwar protestors as "hippies." It's not that there weren't "centrist" people who felt that way... but most of those hippy-denigrating "centrists" of 1968 became avid Reagan voters, and avid Gingrich voters, and if they're still alive are now avid Trump voters. They're not looking so "centrist" now. And it's not just that America's moved to the left while they remained still. It's that American public culture no longer shelters some of the views that they have always held.

People who can feel the underbrush they used to hide in shriveling up tend to get rather nasty about it.

Oh, I think it's a spectrum and there are plenty to lash out at different people like your examples. But there are also plenty of examples where people who would agree, ask for, and vote fairly leftish/liberal (for America) who view some people as SJW as well. Off the top of my head, the kid reporter at Missouri U whom protesters and even a professor wanted to kick out of a public area. That professor and the protestors were called in many places as SJW and I'm not sure it's unwarranted. Since it's a label for 'left wing loonie' it doesn't surprise me that right wing loonies use it for everything, but even the center or center left use it for exactly that 'left wing loonie'.

Edit: fixed quote tags.