Why I Use “SJW” As A Pejorative

I got asked on Twitter:

The simple answer is that “because they are wrecking this country”. But the real answer is something I can’t fit into 140-character chunks.

By “SJW”, or “social justice warrior”, I refer to the kind of crybully leftist who thinks that people’s race, gender, sexuality, and nationality completely define them and their place in society, and who think “diversity” is the only metric that matters when looking at a group of people or field of endeavor.

The SJW is known by their embrace of one fundamental idea: that people’s success or lack thereof is purely determined by their genetics and adherence to societal norms of sexuality and gender, and that society is structured to favor some and disfavor others on that basis. They eschew any sort of personal responsibility for one’s lot in life. They see any inequality in outcome at all as a wrong to be redressed by taking from the successful and giving to the unsuccessful, by force if necessary.

There’s one main problem with this overarching desire for equality. It’s just a restatement of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” — the most evil idea ever committed to paper. More than 150 million people have been killed in its name. That’s more than every religious war ever fought, all put together.

But closer examination reveals that it’s not equality they really want. What they really want is not to be made equal, but superior, to occupy the positions that those they deem “privileged” now occupy. They want to punish those who they see as benefiting from the sins of their ancestors and take their places on top of society.

Don’t believe me? How come SJWs don’t picket NBA games for racial inequality?

There is no such thing as “social justice”. It’s a dog-whistle to the Left, to signal that the speaker is really in favor of overturning the current social order and bringing about a new one with them on top. Justice is always and solely a quality and state of individual people, never societies.

I got to this point in the discussion because I supported the Indiegogo campaign to Save LambdaConf, both with my dollars and by posting a tweet:

@vmcampos took exception to my use of the term SJW. However, that affair provides an excellent example of the damage that SJWs do. The problem started when LambdaConf, a professional conference about functional programming languages, invited a technical speaker, curtis.yarvin, who had, in previous years, posted political statements that they find abhorrent. (Note: I have not sought out his writings, nor do I intend to. I’ll assume for the sake of this discussion that he advocated racial genocide by the most painful means possible. His exact positions are irrelevant to my argument.)

Some folks objected to this particular speaker, not on his technical abilities, but because of his politics and previous statements. They demanded that he be disinvited. The organizers thought about it long and hard and asked other speakers what they thought, and came up with a policy and answer that fits their goals of having a technical conference that provides the best bang for the buck when it comes to information. Yarvin’s invitation has to do with a project of his that is quite definitely of interest to those who use fucntional programming languages. They then adopted a policy that bases one’s invitation and continued presence at the conference on their actions at the conference itself. Yarvin indicated he’d have no problem honoring that policy, and so his invitation stood.

The SJWs went ballistic. Having failed to get Yarvin removed from the speakers’ list, they turned on the conference itself, applying pressure to sponsors to withdraw their sponsorship on pain of feeling the SJWs’ wrath themselves. Some did. In reply, the Indieogo campaign was started. The goal was $10K; it broke $15K the first day.

So much for the SJWs trying to kill the conference.

This whole affair reflects on a preferred tactic of the SJW: silencing folks who dare to disagree publicly with their view. If you dare to argue with them, you are labeled a racist and told to check your privilege and shouted down at every turn. (I fully expect to see replies to this article making those claims.) You’re told you’re making them feel uncomfortable and unsafe, and you need to shut up and let them harangue you in peace. (That’s what they mean by “a conversation”.) If you dare to enter one of their “safe spaces” full of puppy videos and coloring books and Play-Doh, you are told to leave, and if you don’t, they call for “some muscle over here”.

This is most obvious in today’s universities. A university is supposed to be a place where students are challenged and exposed freely to all sorts of ideas so they can learn to think for themselves and, just possibly, come out with richer minds and opinions they’ve formed for themselves, rather than being spoon-fed. Sadly, that’s not at all the case any more. Today’s college students are demanding that the campus be a safe space where nobody is forced to hear an uncomfortable thought and nobody has to confront anything they find disagreeable. The result is a generation of gender studies graduates unfit for any sort of real-world employment but staggering under mountains of debt — and they demand that society indemnify them for their poor choices.

The simple truth is that life is not a safe space. People are going to disagree with you. They’re going to call you names. They’re going to say you’re a bad person who shouldn’t be permitted to live and play on the Internet. You’re not going to be able to shut them up. Sometimes, it’s going to be rough as hell and quite painful. An adult works through it and goes on with his life. SJW crybullies want to silence those who do it permanently in every forum.

vmcampos mentioned this in his initial tweet to me:

Yes, I was ridiculed online, heavily and for quite a while. It hurt like hell at times. I got through it, though, by deciding that I didn’t give a fuzzy rat’s ass what people thought of me. I was going to have my fun, my way. I was going to have my opinions, naysayers be damned. I was going to be honest. If you ask me a question, you’ll get a straight answer, and if you don’t like that answer, that’s your problem, not mine. I’ve stuck to that ever since, and had a hell of a lot of fun being a fat guy in spandex.

Life is unfair. Some people are going to have it better than others. You won’t improve your own life by tearing others down, though. The only way to have a better life is to make one for yourself. Quit worrying about what the other guy has. It’s not a zero-sum game.

(And no, I am not saying that the poor are responsible for being poor…only that they have it in their power to do something about it.)

The SJWs will, no doubt, rip into me for this article. You know what? Bring it. I’m ready.