The problem of SJWs

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You're not the first one to try it on me.

You're completely right. Thank goodness the liberals are denouncing white privilege and standing up to far-right identity politics which has threatened the Western way of life.

SJWs changed all these atrocities, so haters can suck it.

Really?

There are some people in our society who can use their wealth to influence elections. I can't do that.

Over the last year, the most common rebuttal to my intermittent coverage of campus culture has been: Why does it matter? These are students, after all. They’ll grow up once they leave their cloistered, neo-Marxist safe spaces. The real world isn’t like that. You’re exaggerating anyway. And so on. I certainly see the point. In the world beyond campus, few people use the term microaggressions without irony or an eye roll; claims of “white supremacy,” “rape culture,” or “white privilege” can seem like mere rhetorical flourishes; racial and gender segregation hasn’t been perpetuated in the workplace yet; the campus Title IX sex tribunals where, under the Obama administration, the “preponderance of evidence” rather than the absence of a “reasonable doubt” could ruin a young man’s life and future are just a product of a hothouse environment. And I can sometimes get carried away.

The reason I don’t agree with this is because I believe ideas matter. When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large. What matters most of all in these colleges — your membership in a group that is embedded in a hierarchy of oppression — will soon enough be what matters in the society as a whole.

And, sure enough, the whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse. The idea of individual merit — as opposed to various forms of unearned “privilege” — is increasingly suspect. The Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment — untrammeled free speech, due process, individual (rather than group) rights — are now routinely understood as mere masks for “white male” power, code words for the oppression of women and nonwhites. Any differences in outcome for various groups must always be a function of “hate,” rather than a function of nature or choice or freedom or individual agency. And anyone who questions these assertions is obviously a white supremacist himself.

Polarization has made this worse — because on the left, moderation now seems like a surrender to white nationalism, and because on the right, white identity politics has overwhelmed moderate conservatism. And Trump plays a critical role. His crude, bigoted version of identity politics seems to require an equal and opposite reaction. And I completely understand this impulse. Living in this period is to experience a daily, even hourly, psychological hazing from the bigot-in-chief. And when this white straight man revels in his torment of those unlike him — and does so with utter impunity among his supporters — there’s a huge temptation to respond in kind. A president who has long treated women, in his words, “like s**t,” and bragged about it, is enough to provoke rage in any decent person. But anger is rarely a good frame of mind to pursue the imperatives of reason, let alone to defend the norms of liberal democracy.

And yes, I’m not talking about formal rules — but norms of liberal behavior. One of them is a robust public debate, free from intimidation. Liberals welcome dissent because it’s our surest way to avoid error. Cultural Marxists fear dissent because they believe it can do harm to others’ feelings and help sustain existing identity-based power structures. Yes, this is not about the First Amendment. The government is not preventing anyone from speaking. But it is about the spirit of the First Amendment.

And the impulse to intimidate, vilify, ruin, and abuse a writer for her opinions chills open debate. This is a real-world echo of the campus habit of disrupting speakers, no-platforming conservatives, and shouting people down. But now this reflexive hostility to speech is actually endorsed by writers and editors. Journalism itself has become a means of intimidating journalists.

If voicing an “incorrect” opinion can end your career, or mark you for instant social ostracism, you tend to keep quiet. This silence on any controversial social issue is endemic on college campuses, but it’s now everywhere.

No one feels capable of saying anything in public. In the #MeToo debate, the gulf between what Twitter screams and what pops up in your private email in-box is staggering. It’s as big a gulf on the left as you find between the public statements and private views of Republicans on Trump. This is compounded by the idea that only a member of a minority group can speak about racism or homophobia, or that only women can discuss sexual harassment. The only reason this should be the case is if we think someone’s identity is more important than the argument they might want to make. And that campus orthodoxy is now the culture’s as a whole.

The whole cultural Marxist idea of a microaggression, after all, is that it’s on a spectrum with macro-aggression. Patriarchy and white supremacy — which define our world — come in micro, mini and macro forms — but it’s all connected. A bad date is just one end of a patriarchal curve that ends with rape. And that’s why left-feminists are not just interested in exposing workplace abuse or punishing sex crimes, but in policing even consensual sex for any hint of patriarchy’s omnipresent threat.

Privacy? Forget about it. Traditionally, liberals have wanted to see politics debated without regard for the private lives of those in the fray — because personal details can distract from the cogency of the argument. But cultural Marxists see no such distinction. In the struggle against patriarchy, a distinction between the public and private makes no sense. In fact, policing private life — the personal is political, remember — is integral to advancing social justice.

There’s a reason that totalitarian states will strip prisoners of their clothing. Left-feminists delight in doing this metaphorically to targeted men — effectively exposing them naked to public ridicule and examination because it both traumatizes the object and more importantly sits out there as a warning to others.

Due process? Real life is beginning to mimic college tribunals. When the perpetrator of an anonymous list accusing dozens of men of a whole range of sexual misdeeds is actually celebrated by much of mainstream media (see this fawning NYT profile), you realize that we are living in another age of the Scarlet Letter. Moira Donegan has yet to express misgivings about possibly smearing the innocent — because the cause is far more important than individual fairness. Besides, if they’re innocent, they’ll be fine! Ezra Klein has openly endorsed campus rules that could frame some innocent men. One of the tweets in response to some of my recent writing on this has stuck in my mind ever since: “can anyone justify why the POSSIBLE innocence of men is so much more important than the DEFINITE safety and comfort of women?” And yet this principle of preferring ten guilty people to go free rather than one innocent person to be found guilty was not so long ago a definition of Western civilization.

Treating people as individuals rather than representatives of designated groups? Almost every corporation now has affirmative action for every victim-group in hiring and promotion. Workplace codes today read like campus speech codes of a few years ago. Voice dissent from this worldview and you’ll be designated a bigot and fired (see James Damore at Google). The media is out front on this too. Just as campuses have diversity tsars, roaming through every department to make sure they are in line, we now have a “gender editor” at the New York Times, Jessica Bennett. Her job is to “curate, elevate and expand gender reporting” throughout the newsroom. Among her previous work are forums on male abuse of power. “Our gender content will exist throughout every section of the paper and be produced in every medium,” Bennett explains. And not just gender, of course: “I want everything we do to be intersectional in its approach — and race, class, and gender identity are an important part of that.” Does she understand that the very word intersectional is a function of neo-Marxist critical race theory? Is this now the guiding philosophy of the paper of record?

Many media organizations now have various private, invitation-only Slack groups among their staffers — and they are often self-segregated into various gender and racial categories along classic campus “safe space” lines. No men are allowed in women’s slack; no non-p.o.c.s in the people-of-color slack; and so on. And, of course, there are no such venues for men — in this Orwellian world, some groups are more equal than others. At The Atlantic, the identity obsession even requires exhaustive analyses of the identity of sources quoted in stories. Ed Yong, a science writer, keeps “a personal list of women and people of color who work in the beats that I usually cover,” so he can make sure that he advances diversity even in his quotes.

Objective truth? Ha! The culture is now saturated with the concept of “your own truth” — based usually on your experience of race and gender. In the culture, it is now highly controversial for individuals in one racial/gender group to write about or portray anyone outside it — because there is no art that isn’t rooted in identity. Movies are constantly pummeled by critics not for being bad movies but for being “problematic” on social justice. Books are censored in advance by sensitivity readers to conform with “social justice” protocols. As for objective reality, I was at an event earlier this week — not on a campus — when I made what I thought was the commonplace observation that Jim Crow laws no longer exist. Uncomprehending stares came back at me. What planet was I on? Not only does Jim Crow still exist, but slavery itself never went away! When I questioned this assertion by an African-American woman, I was told it was “not my place” to question her reality. After all, I’m white.

Look: I don’t doubt the good intentions of the new identity politics — to expand the opportunities for people previously excluded. I favor a politics that never discriminates against someone for immutable characteristics — and tries to make sure that as many people as possible feel they have access to our liberal democracy. But what we have now is far more than the liberal project of integrating minorities. It comes close to an attack on the liberal project itself. Marxism with a patina of liberalism on top is still Marxism — and it’s as hostile to the idea of a free society as white nationalism is.

The goal of our culture now is not the emancipation of the individual from the group, but the permanent definition of the individual by the group. We used to call this bigotry. Now we call it being woke.

Almost every corporation now has affirmative action for every victim-group in hiring and promotion.

Look: I don’t doubt the good intentions of the new identity politics — to expand the opportunities for people previously excluded.

The dances will go on for these defiant dads and daughters despite the Department of Education’s new guidelines over gender-specific events.
“This politically correct stuff has got to stop,” said Thomas Tirotta, 43, who took his 10-year old Lila to the father-daughter dance at PS 38 on Staten Island Friday night.

“It’s something that’s been around for a long time,” Tirotta said. “Let the people enjoy it and if you don’t like it, don’t go.”

The DOE ordered schools to “eliminate” any “gender-based” practices like father-daughter dances last year. The DOE said Friday schools that want to host parent-child events must ensure they’re gender-neutral and open to all students and caregivers.

But three schools including PS 38 said they still planned to hold daddy-daughter dances and a fourth has one on its online calendar.

“They’re trying to take away from the dads, from the good fathers. … It’s all political now,” said Raul Mejia, who added taking his 5-year-old daughter Isabelle to the PS 38 dance was important because “I want to start her young, so she can know how a guy is supposed to treat her.”

DOE said PS 38 was given guidance to update the event to welcome everyone.

The Midland Beach elementary school listed the shin-dig as a father-daughter dance on its website and confirmed in a phone call that it was holding a father-daughter dance. But it also dubbed the soiree a “Valentine’s Day Dance” in an online calendar, with a stock photo of a little girl dancing on top of a man’s shoes.

The enthusiastic dads and daughters knew exactly what they were celebrating Friday night.

PS 3 on Staten Island will have a “Father Daughter Dance-Enchanted Ball” on March 3, according to the school. DOE said this is an off-site, non-school related event sponsored by the PTA.

PS 209 in Queens also plans a “Father Daughter Dance” for March 8. And PS 83 in the Bronx still has a “Father/Daughter Dance” on its online calendar for June 6, as well as a May 19 “Mother and Son Field Day” and a “Mother/Daughter Spa Night” on April 27.

DOE said it’s consulting with the schools to ensure these events are inclusive if they are held on school grounds.

When the DOE becomes aware of events that don’t follow the gender guidelines, education officials work with schools to ensure changes are made “as quickly as possible,” spokeswoman Miranda Barbot said.

We are sending a reminder to schools about the guidelines that are in place to ensure school-related events are inclusive of all students and families,” Barbot said.
The DOE’s new Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Student Guidelines issued last March 1 told schools to end all gender-based practices that don’t serve a clear educational purpose.

The policy update prompted Staten Island’s PS 65 to abruptly scrap its traditional father-daughter dance this month.

Confused parents at the Stapleton school slammed political correctness when the dance was postponed for March 2 and opened to kids and caregivers of any gender.

While there’s no DOE policy explicitly banning father-daughter dances, they can be “triggering” for some students or parents, according to Jared Fox, the department’s LGBT community liaison.

Controversy over the dances appear to have spooked other schools.

A Friday night party at PS 63 in Queens was originally dubbed the “Daddy Daughter Dance” on the school’s Facebook page Jan. 19. But someone who answered the school’s main line this week corrected a caller to say the event was actually a “Sweetheart Dance.”

A Minnesota school district is dropping two classic novels, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” from its required reading list because of the books’ liberal use of a racial slur.

Officials at Duluth Public Schools say the move, which follows similar ones taken by other school districts in Virginia, Mississippi and Pennsylvania in recent years, was a response to complaints they had received in the past. The books are still available in libraries, and students can read them on their own time, but school officials will look at other novels on the same topic to add to its curriculum, Michael Cary, director of curriculum and instruction, told the Duluth News Tribune.

“We felt that we could still teach the same standards and expectations through other novels that didn’t require students to feel humiliated or marginalized by the use of racial slurs,” Cary, who was not available for comment Wednesday, told the paper.

Harper Lee and Mark Twain didn’t shy away from using the n-word when they wrote the American classics. Both books have historically been among the American Library Association’s list of 100 most frequently challenged books. Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” a story about a poor white boy and a slave, most recently made the list in 2015, when a group of students in Montgomery County in Pennsylvania said its use of the n-word made them uncomfortable.

Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a book about racism in the United States, has long been targeted for removal from libraries and schools. In 1966, a school board in Virginia invited the ire of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who mocked the board in a letter to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

"Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo? Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin? Burn it. Someone has written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag."

Autism is used as an insult, ban it

Not sure what you mean.

The word autistic is often used in a non offensive context but these days it is also being used as an insult. Following SJW thinking the word autism is offensive period and must be banned. There is plenty of precedent for this try looking in the current DSM for the diagnosis of manic depression or ret*d.