Social Justice Warriors and the New Culture War

boing
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I’m not sure if you’re being intentionally obtuse, the point was “Let’s not use ‘feminism’ to reinforce gender roles and gender essentialism.” I’m a fan of the postmodern type feminists (think Jodi Dean) and not so much of SJWs because of exactly this problem.

Look at the link (Or contemplate it’s unstated examples of people like Radia Perlman and Limor Fried) : Women get respect in many traditionally male dominated spaces when they recognize the (usually sex independent, though sometimes gender encoding) norms of the space instead of expecting it to conform to their conditioned gender role. Look at the outliers to either end for degrees issued in various fields by gender. The narrative is that men don’t tend to go into nursing or teaching because of socialization and social perception, and women don’t go into CS or engineering because the professional culture is poisonous to women, but we’re really talking about exactly the same phenomenon in both cases.

I don’t see “Sewing is Over” headlines because the culture around that is historically female dominated and thus some of the encoded values in the subculture are unfamiliar or uncomfortable for folks with traditional western male socialization (and I say this as a dude who enjoys sewing). We all [should?] have multiple personas that we project to suit the subculture we’re interacting with, I project differently depending on which hobby subculture I’m currently in with (and, in a self-aware way, probably harm my long-term career prospects by not projecting differently in Engineer and Educator roles) because I respect the subcultures and their role as a comfortable space for the people who constructed them more than I want everything to be tailored to suit me.

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Some pretty high profile feminists beg to differ and said so 20 years ago. Playing identity politics is not just bad of the intersecting causes, it’s bad for the feminist’s stated goals too (though, to be fair, the linked author is also a Marxist, so this is an unsurprising stance).

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These can both be true (and I would assert that they are both true).

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I can point directly at MRA types who feel unhappy because women can’t date them, and lash out because of it. The murders in Isla Vista CA are a fairly well known example. The guys manifesto is mirrored all over the internet in various forms.

This still makes them awful people, and many who were in similar situations didn’t become awful, but telling yourself they are what they are because they’re just evil, and being evil makes you feel good is uninspired thinking.

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Of course they’re both true. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.

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I feel like what we are now witnessing is the current state of an ongoing process wherein one group of empowered and forthright, intelligent and curious people are trying to establish some kind of benchmark of humanity for another group that seems, by their reactive behavior, to confound the principles upon which the first have founded their world view. Whilst the second wonders aloud how the first can even function in the real world, maintaining, as they seem to, so many implicitly incorrect assumptions.
Eventually both groups will learn the most effective way of recognising one another or they will die out like the dinosaurs, whilst the other takes freely to the air, like the dinosaurs.

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Speaking as a Marxist, I have to acknowledge that this is definitely a serious shortcoming with the Marxist tradition.

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Yes, I think we can certainly discuss the whole “race is a construct” notion and understand how real the construction of race and racism actually is and how it’s shaped history - and to understand how that intersects with political economy. I think it might be in part due to the whole, “when you have a hammer, all problems look like nails…” if that makes sense.

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They think it’s a game.

It looks like this is literally true: http://gamergate.rogue-star-industries.com/ (via https://twitter.com/RogueStarGamez):

Mission
Congratulations, #GamerGate. We have victory on numerous fronts, specifically all GG veterans participating in the daily boycotts and Operation Disrespectful Nod. Consider yourselves hardened veterans. Intel, Scottrade, Unilever have abandoned enemy territory, and will no longer be supplying the enemy throughout the Winter.

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Gamers using the language of gaming (or “war” to go with the self-identified “warriors” they’ve gotten into it with) to describe their experiences? Conspiracy!

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Wow, that’s one heckova conspiracy theory you have there.

This is no more a CIA or state department or other governmental mastermind. This is purely a democratic effort put forth by people getting a raw shake, and they are damn sick of it.

We have groups of people who are able to communicate better now than any time ever in the past, and they are able to also better see how others are being treated. They are realizing, “hey, we are being treated like shit! Let’s use this new communications media to raise awareness!” They start shouting. Reasonable people see it. They respond in turn to start demanding equitable treatment as well. There is no need to bring in some “government boogeyman”, it’s just this issue is getting more traction because it’s pissing off more people with a voice at the moment.

Remember Occupy Wall Street? That was a movement that was supposed to be for helping to reduce the wealth disparity; but their lack of leadership and lack of a coherent message doomed it from the start. These people who fight for equal rights for all have a clear message, clear demands, and people are willing to take up leadership positions for it. Something OWS never did.

Also, don’t lash out on something just because it’s not you’re cause. Don’t call people fake because they don’t share your exact priorities. I, for one, am a feminist, supporter of the ideas of abolishing “race”, fighting racism and prejudice against nationality and heritage, as well as a pacifist and someone who strongly supports bringing the wealth disparity down to nothing. But your accusations of conspiracy are completely unfounded and honestly damn insulting.

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Wasn’t “social justice warrior” created as a pejorative term by their opponents?

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I’ve been told it started as a selected name and became a pejorative, and that it started as a pejorative and became a name. I have no idea which is true, or if it was convergent, or what.

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I’ts worth noting that by all official accounts, Sarkeesian flew over to the DICE studio, gave a seminar, then left because that was what she was hired to do as a consultant.

Her comment about the controls being “too difficult for women” are from an anonymous source (the most trustworthy kind) and only appear in articles that are hostile toward her involvement and present the situation as if DICE was somehow mandated by EA to “implement her ideas” (thusly “ruining” Mirror’s Edge 2). In fact, there’s very few articles reporting about the event that aren’t from a viewpoint hostile about EA hiring Sarkeesian, which is largely because it’s actually a considerably less notable event if you don’t buy into the idea that she’s ‘poisoning’ video-games.

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In no way do I approve of the actions of the misogynists, but it can be useful to understand where the reaction comes from.

For the most part, the worst behaved are reacting to women invading what they consider their clubhouse. They have built a culture around video games that compensates for their lack of sexual success by demeaning women in the games and by excluding women from the community (which means they are not constantly reminded what they will never have).

The introduction of women to video games has and will continue to substantially change this culture, bringing it more into line with the greater outside culture. Unfortunately for many of the young men of this culture, the greater culture considers them losers, and most women naturally find their attentions grotesque and their presence unpleasant. No one wants the starving homeless person at their dinner table.

Unfortunately for these men, it turns out that the area of desert they staked out where no one would go and they could develop their “culture” that allowed them to survive their status has accidentally become rather valuable to society as a whole. So now it’s time for them to go. (Traditionally, society would send them to war where they would die, but thankfully that method of pruning unwanted males from society is no longer acceptable.)

Anyway, the eventual solution is for them to move on to some other wasteland, where they can keep out of society’s eye and build another, female-less society that allows them to make their life bearable.

The only fly in the ointment is the Internet. For the first time in history, mainstream society is being forced to share its general social space with unsuccessful young men rather than exiling them to where no-one had to deal with them (and usually had a high mortality rate). This means that we will probably have to deal with misogynistic outbursts on the Internet for the foreseeable future. Sadly, the usual social restrictions work poorly on those who have nothing to lose.

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It’s hard to take their “constructive” comments about her work because of the intensely negative vitriol that comes with it.

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That is definitely not true in all cases. You do get folks who are just plain ol’ sociopaths, but most awful people are awful for a reason. That’s not any kind of excuse for their behavior; it’s a strategy for how to prevent more awful people in the future.

And, BTW, if you actually want things to get better, “some people are just born irredeemably awful” is a terrible approach. You will never change anyone’s mind if you don’t believe that minds can be changed.

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That’s not lazy, that’s a tutorial mission. Tutorials are supposed to be easy while looking exciting.

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Tutorials are designed to show you how to play the game.

Call of duty’s single player missions can be very much an on-rails experience, and I doubt that’s appropriate to the themes of the game.

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Feeling sad because you can’t get a date or your romantic feelings are not reciprocated v.s. predatory or abusive behaviour are not the same thing. Feeling sad = emotions. Abusive behaviour results from thinking, beliefs.

I can point at dudes who have a long history of dating success with women, who have dated women that were attracted to them, were kind to them, and who were what could be described as a good girlfriend who those dudes ABUSED. Nerds, jocks, cool guys, artists, musicians, literati, subculture antiheros, tech dudes - all kinds of guys who have been wildly successful in their field, who were also socially and economically successful. They treated the women in relationships with them horribly. Like not a little impatient or exasperated here or there - threats, intimidation, physical violence, stalking, extremely destructive behaviour targeted specifically at their partner with the intent to hurt/damage.

These misogynist dudes on a rampage of internet harassment - what kind of boyfriend do you think they would be ? Positive female attention towards them is not going to solve their problem ! Many of them have impossibly high standards for what sort of girl/woman they would even consider dating.

"Would you say that if the cat chose to eat the mouse, the cat must have felt “threatened” in some way ? Would you say that the cat probably had “anger issues,” simply didn’t know how to manage and express its anger appropriately, and ended up taking out irs anger in the mouse ? Would you say that the cat probably had a very traumatic history involving mice, probably in childhood, leading it to have “trust issues” with mice in general ? That the cat anticipated maltreatment by the mice, this justifying a “get them before they get you philosophy ?..Often folks make assumptions very similar to the ones described above when trying to understand the motivations for human aggression, especially aggression of the predatory or instrumental variety.” George K.Simon,Phd, from Character Disturbance.

Are these misogynists “evil” ? I don’t know - and that wasn’t what I was saying. Abusive aggression is typically a learned behaviour. Having a difference of opinion with Anita Sarkesian’s video is not what I would describe as “lashing out”. I also would not describe a specific, repetitive campaign of harassment, threats, stalking as “lashing out”.

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