A common pattern–on widespread display in our generation:
“People who are trying to prevent members of society from speaking the truth will often punish minor criticisms … simply to send the message to the rest of society that no dissent will be tolerated and no attempt to form an opposing group — even one that differs only slightly from the status quo — will be tolerated.”
(Source: Professor Timor Kuran, quoted in this fascinating piece on how knitters and genre novelists turned vicious.)
“Social Justice Warriors” with their current obsessions with racisms and sexisms fit the type.
I say “s.j.w.” because truly they are anti-social and anti-justice. Even the “warrior” tag is suspect, as their tactics are the cowardly ones of anonymous sniping on social media, wearing masks in public, and seeking safety in packs and herds.
How to respond? That’s the big question for my upcoming Culture Wars 2.0 and After Postmodernism events this year in Australia and elsewhere.
”I say “s.j.w.” because truly they are anti-social and anti-justice. Even the “warrior” tag is suspect, as their tactics are the cowardly ones of anonymous sniping on social media, wearing masks in public, and seeking safety in packs and herds.”
Completely agree. What strikes me about them, is how ignorant, dumb and intellectually lacking they are. I have to this day not read a robust argument from them or something from a ‘s.j.w.’ that is not devoid of the very things they accuse other people of. They pretend they are capable to successfully analyze the world around them, except themselves, as if they were not part of it and were, in fact, above the fray.
Ridiculous people. Even more ridiculous is the ‘s.j.w.’ tag, which is not just suspect, but completely farcical. This is why Trump became president and Hillary Clinton did not. People were already tired and sick of the tantrums these childish and annoying people throw. I don’t like Trump, but I like these annoying and ridiculous people even less.
They say irritating, far-fetched and silly things like ‘the world was built for men’. It obviously doesn’t matter to them all the things men did for women through the centuries.
They are also highly selfish….I never see feminists bemoaning how women in some backward countries go through. They just moan about themselves, and preferably, at the individual level. Everywhere you read: ‘This man said this!’ ‘This man said that, 35 years ago!’, as if there’s no worse problems.
Meanwhile, we are getting old, and that’s the ‘lucky’ ones of us.
How to respond? I don’t know how everybody should respond, but the way I respond is by staying out of it entirely. But if I must respond, I would do so by putting together brutally logical arguments, and find proof of the contrary of pretty much every single thing these people state.
The world was built for men? I think that first of all, we would need to make the statement a lot less general and understand what these people exactly mean when they say this nonsense, and then, how about finding proof of the contrary of what they say. An observant mind will have no problem finding that.
All the best for your book, I hope it will be utterly destructive. Not because of ‘hatred’ but because of intelligent arguments.