Should Social Justice Warriors reclaim the term Social Justice Warriors?

[Glitch]

@chenille

Martin Luther King is often described as a fighter for rights. The dictionary gives fighter as primarily meaning a boxer, a plane designed to destroy other planes, or generally someone or something that fights, given primarily as battle or combat.

It’s accepted usage, despite directly implying violence by your same standards. And is that really such an incorrect implication? A fighter or warrior can be somebody who tries to intervene and stop violence, too, and people are getting hurt out there.

No one said it wasn’t accepted usage.

Someone did, however, make the absurd claim that the usage somehow doesn’t directly imply violence and war - which it obviously does.

Now, as for being accepted usage - that’s irrelevant. The original argument was that we ought not choose to frame the larger issue in the language of war. The mere fact that some people do choose to frame it that way is not a counter-argument.

Maybe you think it’s okay to frame issues like Civil Rights in terms of warfare. But other people don’t. You might think it’s fine to call King Jr. a “fighter” or a “warrior”, but others who take offense at the comparison of his efforts to human slaughter and strife prefer terms like “activist”, “reformist”, or “Civil Rights Leader”.

How you choose to speak tells the world what you value. If you think comparisons to warriors are a good thing, you’re telling the world that you think warriors are a good thing.