Tag Archives: Social Justice

On Triggers and Bullies

Scott Alexander has a interesting post on triggers and safe spaces (h/t: Jim), in which he writes:

The rationalist community is a safe space for people who obsessively focus on reason and argument even when it is socially unacceptable to do so.
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If you are the sort of person with the relevant mental quirk, living in a society of people who don’t do this is a terrifying an alienating experience. Finding people who are like you is an amazing, liberating experience. It is, in every sense of the word, a safe space.

If you want a community that is respectful to the triggers of people who don’t want to talk about controversial ideas, the Internet is full of them. Although I know it’s not true, sometimes it seems to me that half the Internet is made up of social justice people talking about how little they will tolerate people who are not entirely on board with social justice ideas and norms. Certainly this has been my impression of Tumblr, and of many (very good) blogs I read (Alas, A Blog comes to mind, proving that my brain sorts in alphabetical order). There is no shortage of very high-IQ communities that will fulfill your needs.

But you say you’re interested in and attracted to the rationalist community, that it would provide something these other communities don’t. Maybe you are one of those people with that weird mental quirk of caring more about truth and evidence than about things it is socially acceptable to care about, and you feel like the rationalist community would be a good fit for that part of you. If so, we would love to have you!

But if you want to join communities specifically because they are based around dispassionate debate and ignoring social consequences, but your condition for joining is that they stop having dispassionate debate and take social consequences into account, well, then you’re one of those people – like Groucho Marx – who refuses to belong to any club that would accept you as a member.
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This would be a good time to admit that I am massively, massively triggered by social justice.

I know exactly why this started. There was an incident in college when I was editing my college newspaper, I tried to include a piece of anti-racist humor, and it got misinterpreted as a piece of pro-racist humor. The college’s various social-justice-related-clubs decided to make an example out of me. I handled it poorly (“BUT GUYS! THE EVIDENCE DOESN’T SUPPORT WHAT YOU’RE DOING!”) and as a result spent a couple of weeks having everyone in the college hold rallies against me followed by equally horrifying counter-rallies for me. I received a couple of death threats, a few people tried to have me expelled, and then everyone got bored and found some other target who was even more fun to harass. Meantime, I was seriously considering suicide.

But it wasn’t just that one incident. Ever since, I have been sensitive to how much a lot of social justice argumentation resembles exactly the bullying I want a safe space from – the “aspie”, the “nerd”, that kind of thing. Just when I thought I had reached an age where it was no longer cool to call people “nerds”, someone had the bright idea of calling them “nerdy white guys” instead, and so transforming themselves from schoolyard bully to brave social justice crusader. This was the criticism I remember most from my massive Consequentialism FAQ – he’s a nerdy white dude – and it’s one I have come to expect any time I do anything more intellectual than watch American Idol, and usually from a social justicer.

Scott hovers around a good point and gives it a light jab or two, but doesn’t go for the throat, so I will.

Bullying is not a regrettable by-product of social justice, social justice does not resemble bullying, rather:

Social justice is bullying.

The purpose of social justice is, was, and always will be bullying. Social justice warriors are bullies, nothing more, attempting to use social, economic, and, occasionally, physical force to enforce group conformity in favour of their ‘one true faith’ of ‘equality’.

SJ is the attempt of the weak and vile to force their abnormalities and disorders on the rest of us to make us as broken as they are. When we are all as pathetic as they are, we will all be equal.

To put it in social justice terms, the purpose of the non-normative discourse is to colonize and occupy white male space.

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This is why you never give the SJW’s an inch. These are not simply well-meaning but broken people who need a bit of respect. These are not simply sensitive people who should be given a bit of compassion out of politeness. In normal life some minor accommodations to those naturally predisposed to sensitivity driven discourse is simple politeness, but SJW’s are not these types of people and they should not be given even the smallest of accommodations.

How can you tell that the SJW’s are bullies, rather than simply broken, but well-meaning people?

Simple, they seek to enter where they don’t belong. They purposefully seek out things to feel victimized.

A normal person who is sensitive to something (and might be worthy of some accommodation) generally seeks to avoid that something. As a trite personal example, I find emotional outbursts and certain forms of strong emotionalism uncomfortable; it could be fairly said, I am ‘sensitive’ to them. Because of this I tend to try to avoid situations where they occur and I avoid the type of people who are prone to them. It’s basic common sense.

The SJW, on the other hand, purposefully goes out of her way to intrude in other people’s spaces where she knows she will be uncomfortable and condemn them for making her uncomfortable.

We can see that in Scott’s example above: an SJW tries to enter a rationalist community devoted to a safe space for dispassionate discourse and demands that everybody stop with the dispassionate discourse.

You can see it in all the women offended by RoK or Matt Forney. They intrude on a male space dedicated to masculine discussion, where they know they will be offended and feel ‘victimized’.  We can see this with SRS on Reddit, who intrude into RPR and act offended.

In real life, the colonization of male space can be exemplified by the current concerns of the military; the SJW types demand women be allowed into the military, then whine when the military doesn’t bend over backwards to cater to their every whim.

It would be like me going to an Emotions Anonymous (I was only mildly surprised that existed) meeting and demanding they all stop being so weepy and emotional. It would be simply wrong. It’s not my place to be there and, if I am there as a newcomer or guest, it’s not my place to demand they change for me.

This is who you can know the SJW’s are bullies. They refuse to live and let live; they barge into other’s spaces and demand that these spaces change for them.

Never accommodate them.

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I’ve outlined a number of ways they attempt to bully their allies (and others) into conformity, but of all these, the trigger warning is the most insidious attempt at colonization.

Not only does the SJW demand you kowtow to her will in her own spaces, she demands you kowtow to her will in your own space.

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As an aside, Scott, if you end up following the backlink and reading this, I know I still haven’t got around to addressing your response to my response to the antireactionary FAQ. I still plan to. Hopefully, eventually.

What’s in a Name?

The best way to identify the goals and predict the actions of a leftist or bureaucratic (redundancy) organization is to assume they are the opposite of what the name of the organization would imply if the organization were named honestly.

Thus, an organization with social justice in its name is generally both both rending social bonds and committing mass injustice.

A leftist organization with community in the name is usually destroying said community.

An organization evoking peace is generally dedicated to spreading chaos.

A leftist organization labelled Christian can generally be found destroying Christian values and hollowing out churches.

A leftist organization with prosperity or anti-poverty in its name will be creating as much poverty as possible.

Defender of Abnormality Attacks the Abnormal

I came across this post by some “social justice” blogger named Renee, where she complains about demisexuals, otherkin, transethnics, transabled, transfat, and other such abnormal people.(h/t Clarissa).

Now, I’ve never heard of any of these abnormalities, so it’s possible you haven’t either. So, I’ll give some definitions in the abnormals’ own words:

A demisexual is a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone. It’s more commonly seen in but by no means confined to romantic relationships. The term demisexual comes from the orientation being “halfway between” sexual and asexual.

In other words, they’re sexually repressed.

Otherkin is a collective noun for an assortment of people who have come to the somewhat unorthodox, and possibly quite bizarre, conclusion that they identify themselves as being something other than human…  By far the most common explanation from those who fit the definition (even if they don’t claim this specific label) is that whilst their physical forms may be human, their essence, soul or equivalent term is not.

In other words, furries who take the creepiness even farther.

I can’t find a gathering place for transethnics other than a private Reddit, most of the sites I came across were “social justice” types whining about them, similar to Renee. So I’ll just tell you that they’re simply people who think they are of a different race than they actually are. (I’ll note that transethnicity was used to identify a real thing experienced felt by adoptees adopted by a family of a different ethnicity).

“That ‘thing’, transabled, just exactly what is it?“. It is hard to define in just a few words, the best way to learn is by going through the site, but in a nutshell, someone who is transabled “wants” to be disabled.

But it is not so much a “want” as much as a “need“. Our “desire” is more a reflection of the fact that our self-image is that of a paraplegic (or amputee, or blind, or any number of other disabilities) than that of an able bodied man or woman.

Unlike the others, these guys at least seem to somewhat recognize there “condition” is pathological.

I’m too lazy to search through a million pages on transfats to find a transfat community, but basically it’s normal people who identify themselves as fat. Sounds like the word anorexia would already cover that, but, anyway…

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So, why am I posting on these abnormal people?

I’m not really posting on them. I think it’s interesting, in an academic sense, that people actually believe these things and I think they should probably see a psychiatrist for these disorders rather than try to justify them to themselves on the internet, but, honestly, I don’t really care. If people want to delude themselves, that’s fine with me. As long as they don’t try to force me to accept their delusions, don’t hurt other people, and don’t demand tax funding for their delusions, it’s no skin off my nose. They should be free to do what they want.

What I’m really posting about is Renee, and other such “social justice” types, who support some of these abnormal delusions, but not others.

If we read Renee’s post, it is very clear she supports transsexuals and her criticism of these abnormalities, is not that they’re abnormal, but rather that the abnormal are appropriating the “social justice” language and arguments that other “oppressed” people use.

What is fundamentally different between a man who thinks he’s a woman and a caucasion who thinks he’s black?

How is the transgender person who wants to mutilate himself because he thinks he’s a woman when biologically he’s not, different from the able-bodied person who want to mutilate himself because he thinks he’s disabled, when biologically he’s not?

It’s logically contradictory.

If you accept that one group’s self-identity that spit in the face of biological fact is real, you have to accept the other groups’ self-identities that spit in the face of biological fact are real too.

If you call one group’s self-identity fake, you have to call the rest of them fake as well.

They are equivalent.

It’s ridiculous to defend one, then at the same time deride the others.

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The reason I think they don’t accept the obvious equivalence is three-fold:

1) Transablism, transfat, otherkin, demi-sexual, etc. are clearly either self-delusions and/or pathologies. They are obviously abnormalities that should probably be looked at by a professional, so much so that even “social justice” types who otherwise can not not support any group thinks they’re oppressed can tell it’s delusion/pathology. These groups have not had years of academics, activists, and “social justice” types trying to normalize their abnormalities enough that people will deny plain biological fact; without that ideological haze muddying the issue it’s obvious these people are denying biological fact. If they were to admit the equivalence of transsexuality to transablism, otherkin, etc., it would become plain to all that the groups they support that deny biological fact are also delusional/pathological.

2) By appropriating the language of the “social justice” types, these otherkins et al, show just how ridiculous a lot of this “social justice” stuff is.

3) Competitive victimhood. For some reason I don’t understand, people seem to really like feeling like victims; they compete over who has the greater victimhood. This is just one more battle in that war.

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All this to say, I don’t care what you do in the privacy of your own home. I don’t care what self-delusions or abnormalities you self-identify with as long as you don’t try to force them on me; we all have our own self-delusions and constructed identities.

But if you’re going to attack the self-delusions or abnormalities of another group, make sure that they are not exactly the same as the self-delusions and abnormalities you have spent your life defending. It just looks ridiculous.