That was a pretty amazing set of “wtf”. Seeing rants that said GG is " winning" with advertisements selling pickup artist manuals almost made me puke.
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Actually, I suspect you’re wrong about that. Well, for some of them, sure, there are the virulently hateful contingent, of course, but I think for a large number, maybe the majority, it’s more a problem of (semi-willful, to varying degrees of semi) blindness. The term “social justice warrior” is mocking and derogatory, not because they think social justice is de facto bad, but because they think these people are ridiculous, self-righteous poseurs fighting battles that don’t need to be fought. They might be sympathetic to the idea that, say, women should be paid as much as men for the same job, or that nobody should be fired just because they’re a different race, but they regard things like getting all worked up over jokes or “innocent” compliments or hitting on someone or trying to dictate what art they enjoy as in the category of ridiculousness, not a real problem, and view SJWs as people who do these things.
So, of course, because they see themselves as believing in fairness, any slight against them as a race, sex, class, even if it’s a tiny one, that suddenly becomes a real problem (Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die!) and they probably even see SJWs as perpetrating unfairness while claiming to fight it at worst, unnecessary at best.
I want to stress I don’t agree with this point of view, I just think that’s what’s going on with most people who complain about SJWs. It’s like the classic case of people who are blind to privilege because they don’t want to believe that they were born on third base instead of hitting a triple, so instead they assume other people just aren’t trying hard enough. Maybe that’s what you meant by ‘reject the concept of social justice’ all along, but regardless I think the distinction needs to be made, because I believe a lot of these people CAN be helped (the outright harassers and death-threaters are a different matter).
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BTW, I get your point, but this was authored by the guy who claimed “gamergate was winning”.
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Yeah… #*@% that guy.
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I get your point and I think we generally agree, but at some point even semi-willful ignorance gets entrenched and becomes something much worse. Plus, we keep pointing out that this all really gained ground by actively harrassing women online, with some carrying that over into the real world. I think that indicates how this has ticked over into that something worse territory…
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Why did I click the link… why oh why did I do that to myself…
Its so bad. Soooo bad. Like seriously disturbing. I am not happy posting that link, and I know there are peeps that are not insane promoting GG, but holy crap the (cheer)leaders are terrible
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Sweet Zombie Jesus! I thought We Hunted The Mammoth may have inoculated me from that kind of shite.
I was wrong. Now I need to shower.
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Is this “winning” like in the Charlie Sheen sense of the word? The list reads with a level of nearly transcendental self un-awareness. It’s like imagining one’s social life as a nearly even split between feelings of entitlement and insecurity.
Baldwin on GG - where he makes it a partisan issue and, of course, the Frankfurt School comes up
But isn’t that pretty much it - the uneasy recognition that they are losers combined with the strong feeling that that has been unfairly imposed on them?
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If you mean “pretty much it” as to say “demanding a media soapbox so they can publicly implode into a neurotic mess”, then I would agree.
I read through his “winning” article and it wasn’t Sheen-type winning, that may have been a attempt at humor. No, it was winning against women. That’s why I had to read a few more pieces, to figure out if this was some kind of performance art or are there really people that believe this.
And that, right there is the problem, that they view women as “the enemy”… but they still want women to take care of them and fuck them. Ugh.
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Right?! I debated about describing it that way, but at least this one individual sees it through that lens. I will admit that seeing a mindset that is so egregiously in the wrong side of history is something (I.e. train wreck)
It’s also distribing, to me as a woman, personally. I doubt he’s the only one who thinks this way. I bet he’s got an entire chorus of voices to back him up. I find it scary that there are people who see me as “an enemy” just for my gender… I promise I don’t see men that way, in the least. It’s scary… and they get backed up from some intellectuals, too, who argue that men and boys are under attack in the broader culture (Paglia, sometimes Sullivan).
Honestly, what do you say to this mind set?
“The war between the sexes is the only one where both sides sleep with the enemy.” — Quentin Crisp.
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It reminds me of that scene in the movie Fight Club where Tyler is talking about the realization that you won’t be a rock star or metaphorically live forever and conquer everything. And that realization makes them mad. I think that dynamic may be st play with the “but white dudes are attacked too!” rhetoric. But if that hypothesis is true then it points to a profound lack of empathy, which may predict words will get us no where.
I don’t know, it just boggles my mind. Sexism and racism do no productive work, and because GG is so techie intensive I had expected this would be obvious.
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But they probably would have, if women, Marxists and hippies hadn’t destroyed the natural order of the world as described in early 60s Playboy, dammit!
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I chortled 
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