All Is Not Well in Social Justice-Land
So let’s start talking about it.
A church. A cult. Purity. Dogma. In the pause between these words, I am eight years old and sitting in a pew. Counting the rafters while the pastor drones on at the pulpit.
Fast forward. I am twenty-four, and nine years an activist — almost as long as I’ve been an agnostic. With increasing frequency, those same words are being applied to movements for social justice.
And I can see why, because in some ways I am back again. Counting the rafters. Damned by my own imperfection. Refused compassion because of the very fact that I am human, and thereby, unholy.
In July 2017, Frances Lee’s “Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice” made the rounds in leftist social media spheres and beyond. A Cultural Studies scholar, Lee asks what the culture of activism is, drawing parallels between dogma in organised religion and in social justice spaces.
Sam Killerman of It’s Pronounced Metrosexual, released a series of articles starting in late 2017, unpacking what he calls “the social justice dogma,” that is: “the set of beliefs, stances, and acceptable actions laid down by the authorities within the social justice movement that we hold as incontrovertibly true.”
To me, these articles were pinpricks of hope. I had grown wary of the climate of social justice spaces, especially online, and knowing I wasn’t alone in my wariness allowed me to talk about it. The more vocal I became, the more my friends, acquaintances, and co-organisers felt able to voice their own concerns.
We discussed groups that preach safety but practice superiority, that are hostile to anyone who isn’t born knowing 100 points of social justice lingo, that oust problematic people to protect their own sense of purity rather than meet people where they’re at.
We felt safe — at least among one another — to be honest about our dissatisfaction with Leftbook, Tumblr, and even physical social justice-oriented groups. We wondered whether the toxic climate of online spaces was related to the decline in participation at our physical meetings and events. But we didn’t dare say these things on the internet.
In “Excommunicate Me From the Cult of Toxic Social Justice,” poplar rose writes:
i know i’m not the only one who is ready for something new.
i know that me and my loves one are not the only ones having hushed conversations, confessing to each other what we’re scared to say in public:
i’m done.
i’m done.
i’m done.
None of us are alone in feeling this way. So let’s take a deep breath and say it together: we’re done.
Over the past ten months, I’ve been tending to my health and mental health after suffering activist burnout, which worsened my chronic illness and left me bedbound for about a year. As I recovered, I started to listen to my intuition. In this instance, listening meant taking a step back from social justice spaces, particularly online.
Now, as I grow more healthy, stable, and grounded, I feel reenergised to work to make the world a kinder, more just place. But I can’t return to the way I did activism before — criticising, virtue signalling, exiling offenders, insisting on purity. Instead I’d like to add another affirming voice to the growing ranks of people who are disenchanted with the toxic climate of social justice spaces.
Returning to Lee’s question on the culture of activism, do the ways we’re practicing social justice line up with our motivations for doing the work? Is the outcome justice, or something else entirely? What do you wish our communities could approach differently? How can we move forward from here?
I plan on exploring these questions over the space of a few articles, so please comment below if you’d like to add to that dialogue. Let’s hold space for one another to reaffirm our commitment to ending oppression together. Let’s work not just to be (seen as) good, but to make things better.
