Considering Who The Social Justice Warrior Is And How They Potentially Came To Be; An Old Ideology With A Fresh Wrapping

As a fiction author, a significant portion of my career is spent engrossed in research. It’s part of my work to learn and understand patterns of human behaviors, actions, reactions, and more. In order to create these fictional constructs, it should be obvious that studying real people is a given. Whether or not I agree with what the people do is irrelevant; simply knowing the “who”, “what”, “when”, and “why” is the cornerstone to crafting a believable tale.

The first book that I released, ‘Rabbit in the Road’, was a period piece. It covered a 15 year window of time beginning in the mid-1960's and closing at the beginning of the 1980's. Feminism had gotten itself a fresh injection during that time with the women’s liberation movement, so it naturally stands to reason that those two topics needed a great deal of research. When your protagonist of your book is a young woman who exists in that time frame, the changes to social attitudes absolutely have an effect on the person being crafted. It was during this research that I discovered Christina Hoff Sommers and other scholars that wrote a great deal about the various shades of feminism and the male/female dynamic.

One of the books that I picked up for my research was Christina Hoff Sommers’ ‘Who Stole Feminism’. In chapter 1, Christina describes her experience at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in 1992. Looking back, her recounting of this revealed more than I had initially thought. Many of the women in question who attended that conference would be significantly younger than they are now, considering. We can comfortably say 20 years younger at this point.

The NWSA conference opened with the keynote speaker talking about how the NWSA almost came apart a decade prior (‘82), due to infighting. So it seems to me what happened was a reformation of strategy occurring in the wake of that schism. They had been reaching too hard, too fast, and too high. From the look of things, the classic strategy of changing things ‘from the top down’ was failing. The natural question would be ‘Why wasn’t it working?’ The likeliest answer would probably be because it’s incredibly difficult to get anyone to the top in the first place with an extreme rhetoric, which radical feminism is infamous for.

Hypothetically, I argue that the strategy was changed. Simply put, why try to change from the top-down, which is very difficult when you have a hard time getting anyone to the top, when you could change from the bottom-up? Changing from the bottom-up means doing it through education of our children. Any person of reasonable knowledge knows that changing the mind of an adult who is set in their ways and has numerous life experiences, is much harder than changing the mind of a child/teen/young adult who is still impressionable and has little in comparative experience to counter with.

It’s already known that women have traditionally dominated education as teachers. In 1994 in the US alone, women made up 86% of all elementary and middle school teachers (primary education). In plainer language, this means that there were almost 9 female educators for every 1 male educator, and this dynamic hasn’t changed much in the past 20 years. It stands to reason that a decent portion of these same women would be attendees of conferences like the NWSA and would later go on to have careers in education, from public school teachers to college professors.

With many strategies one does not necessarily need quantity of any given tactic to be successful, you merely need it to be effective. Likewise with radical ideologies and the spread of propaganda, one does not need many extremists to accomplish spreading information, they just need reach. Where can one find the biggest, most impressionable audience with a massive reach per propagandist? The education system, naturally. A single teacher with a decent career length will encounter thousands of impressionable, malleable young minds. Within the education system, these children are frequently taught not to question things; they are taught how to follow directions. They are taught to learn as they’re told and do what they’re told, with very little room for independent thought or opportunity to challenge established ideas presented by their instructors. With that thought in mind, it stands to reason that many of these radical ideologists took positions within the education system, presenting a chance to get to the audience when they’re young and far more receptive to these ideas.

It’s very easy for a teacher to convince students of a myriad of ideas, even crazy things that are above and beyond what is acceptable for any educator to express to their students. A single teacher will have dealt with an entire audience that will mostly listen and do without question, even when the student is having a clear conflict of doubt in following this direction (the many unfortunate stories of students and teachers being engaged in sexual misconduct comes to mind as an example).

Fast forward 20 years to 2012 and now you have people with 20+ years of teaching experience and/or tenure, and their words and ideologies have become dogmatic to their pupils. Their students then left, absolutely converted because we consistently reinforce that you don’t question teacher, and gone out into the world.

Using this hypothetical thought process, it’s become very clear that they found the path of least resistance: Through children. It has been a pretty consistent trait in all animals that it is easier to change the behavior of the young (in this case, children) than it is to change the behavior and thoughts of adults (“you can’t teach an old dog new tricks). Consider the following: we convince children that Santa Claus exists with no empirical evidence, no rational thought, and no legitimate reasoning, but children believe it anyhow. An adult told them, after all. Try that on your average adult, however, and you’re going to have a much harder time.

Consider the age range of the people who typically identify as being a “social justice warrior”; they tend to be in their early to mid 20's, generally. These now young adults were mere infants and toddlers right when this strategic shift in radical feminism began to happen. A 25 year old today was born around 1990, give or take.

If one goes and looks at the types of language expressed by radical feminists and ‘social justice warriors’, you would discover that it is exactly the same language and terminology used by radical feminists from the 1960's onward, and is what Christina Hoff Sommers described over twenty years ago in her book ‘Who Stole Feminism’. They use the exact same talking points, do the same shifting of word definitions, move goalposts in what should reasoned debate, and attempt to shut down all dissent and discourse within traditionally discourse heavy venues. What Social Justice actually is is a new ‘hip’ and ‘fresh’ name for the exact same ideology. The Social Justice type which we are dealing with now, were merely people taught by radical gender feminists in the education system. A fresh coat of paint on the same car.

This also shines a bit of light on current trends, such as the giant push for women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields: STEM fields have been a tough nut for radical feminists to crack, because mostly men had interest in those fields. It wasn’t that women were kept out of those fields, it’s that for a significant portion of time many (but by no means all, not by a long shot) had little interest in them. However, radical gender feminism has always had an interest in these fields, but not for pure reasons. The question of course, would be why. For radical feminism, too many men occupying any given space is always part of its patriarchal conspiracy, regardless of the desires or intents of those who may or may not pursue those interests. STEM fields were one of the places that were incredibly difficult for radical gender feminists to get to for a long time with the Top-Down method. It’s been a roadblock.

This Bottom-Up methodology also explains why video gaming has become targeted on several fronts (in which the consumer revolt #GamerGate has been a large battlefront of): video gaming as a hobby has long been an activity with significant male interest. It is also obviously related to the STEM fields (after all, a great deal of math and technology is involved here!). Video games as a point of entry are also a two-fer; Games are not only STEM related, but they are also recreational, and educational. Let’s not forget that the number of children who play games continues to grow and grow; it’s a perfect place to push an ideology. You’re not only getting them in their education, but you can continue to push the SAME messaging and beliefs through their entertainment as well.

This does lead into a possible explanation of why so many of them of the Social Justice Warrior-type have no concept of objective truth, and why reasoning and rationality tends fails on them when engaged in argument and debate. It is very possible that they’re not being willfully ignorant in many cases. It stands to reason that they may actually do not know how to be objective, because they were never taught how to be objective. They know the word, but it’s a concept that was not learned, and practiced. These people were educated by proponents of an ideology that push ‘listen and believe’ concepts to the forefront; one does not ask questions, one merely does as they are told. The very concept of removing distancing oneself from an argument, objective truth, and more run directly counter to the core tenets of radical feminism.

Those children who grew up after 1990 were taught, graduated, and went out into the world. “You convince the children, and they’ll fight your battle for you.” They’re perpetuating that cycle, through the next propaganda level; through their audiences as bloggers, vloggers, writers, and internet personalities. In their minds and the way they see it, it is no different than the classroom, and they are “teaching” everyone.

A final thought; the one thing that tends to trip the Social Justice Warrior up is that this isn’t going the way that they were taught and shown in the classroom. They’re dealing with other grown adults, many of which were taught how to be objective and had educations that stressed independent thought. As one has likely observed, these interactions tend to be an incredibly frustrating point for them. This is why they instantly turn to insults, screaming profanities, ‘extreme’ reactions (threats of doxxing, threats of physical violence, etc) and more. They don’t know what to do, because they weren’t taught how to deal with that. Why weren’t they? Because even their educators don’t know how. It was the gap in their learning.

In closing, the old adage continues to ring true; “There is nothing new under the sun.” Same opponent, different name. Just as I did with Rabbit in the Road and having to look into the past to truly grasp the material that I wanted to produce, one must also look into the past to understand the origins of ideologues that they are dealing with.