Dissident Scrapbook gives a nice clear account of the Sarah Kendzior/Jacobin magazine controversy for those who didn’t get all the details. (I’m one of those.)
It starts with an opinion piece on the Jacobin site by Amber A’Lee Frost called “Bro Bash”. The commentary is pretty simple. It says men on the Left who aren’t particularly feminist in their approach to thought, presentation, or behavior — often called “bros” or “brocialists” — should not be dismissed outright, and should also not be lumped in with outright misogyinists just for being, you know, men’s men. Frost basically argues that “bros” aren’t as bad as they’re reputed to be.
That article contains the following sentence:
And I just don’t think the diminutive label of ‘bro’ should be [used] to describe more insidious sexism, let alone violent aggression like rape threats.
Meh. I think “brocialist” is pretty apt, actually.
The controversy is over the fact that this sentence, when the piece originally appeared, contained a link to a tweet by Sarah Kendzior in which she referred to a “brocialist” who once leveled a rape threat against her. (I believe but cannot confirm that the words rape threats were hyperlinked to the tweet.) I won’t link to the original tweet, because that really upsets Kendzior, and I want to respect her wishes. But I will quote it in its entirety, something I’ve decided to do because Kendzior has personally definitely drawn far more attention to this tweet than I’ll ever be able to:
I first heard it from a brocialist sending me emails hoping for my rape. So I’m guessing yes.
(It doesn’t really matter, but the “it” in this tweet is the term social justice warrior, and the “yes” refers to whether social justice warrior is supposed to be an insult.)
Ah now that last is one of the details I didn’t get. Interesting. I had thought the feeding frenzy over that word was local to “the atheist community” and its brocialist hatred of feminism and feminists, but clearly that’s quite wrong. Interesting interesting. So it’s not just atheist assholes aka brocialists, it’s also asshole progressives and lefties aka brocialists. Good to know.
Anti-feminists hate me. I hate anti-feminists. No I’m not going to put all that aside for the sake of “the community.” Stalemate.
Yes, SJW is totally intended to be an insult, but it can come from both sides. Like how back in the day PC and “ideologically unsound” were used by the left to mock fellow lefties who were over-zealous ragebeasts taking insult at the drop of a pin. (I’m sure we all know some such drama llamas.) And then it was adopted by the right to mock all lefties.
I’m looking for the whole Matt Bruenig thing… which adds an extra layer to the abuse, especially when Bruenig’s girlfriend shows up to brag that Matt’s building his brand on being an abusive shit.
Don’t worry; I know how to shut up social justice keyboard warriors like this:
Dear Broslima…
I ran into the term “Social Justice Warrior” as (purely) derogatory in online sff fandom a few years back: here are some links (a newspaper about the recent prize controversy, an entry in an sff wiki, and one of the latest cis straight white male authors accusing all the uppity white women and people of color of being social justice warriors):
http://blogs.theprovince.com/2014/05/03/war-is-coming-to-sci-fi-and-fantasy-fandom/
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Social_Justice
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6322517-the-latest-from-the-fainting-couch-brigade-they-go-after-uncle-timmy
There are some claims that the term is reserved only for those social justice advocates who use sj issues as an excuse for bullying–but that gets pretty darn subjective pretty fast.
Me, I see it, and dismiss the person from serious consideration (just as I do with “pc”). (And in some spaces, unfriend or unfollow or block them as well).
Were we not supposed to hate anti-feminists, for the sake of the community? Didn’t get that memo, and I’m too old to change now. Or maybe too stubborn. Actually I’ve decided to go with: too smart. hehe Seems it’s not just the atheist community anyway! I also didn’t know that. I think the reason is, I always had the image of an anti-feminist bros as either a guy swilling beer with his buddies in his garage wearing the same t-shirts emblazoned with the words “Boob Patrol!”; or a socially awkward 20 or 30-something in a darkened basement or living in his mom’s garage, wearing sweats and no shirt, surrounded by a month’s worth of empty snack wrappers and empty pop cans and sport drink bottles, screaming “Feminazi!!!!” at the computer monitor when on twitter, while toggling back and forth between the slymepit forum, twitter, FTB, an mra site, and porn. In either case, I didn’t envision them as the god-fearing types. I’ve never refered to God believing anti-feminists as bros… I simply referred to them as…. religious! lol.
I am probably stating the obvious, but for a conservative, social justice warrior is a term of ridicule.
You can get a good insight into the conservative mind via Michael Oakeshott:
http://faculty.rcc.edu/sellick/On%20Being%20Conservative.pdf
Eh, seems to me that some fair percentage of the Left or Liberals or however you want to frame them are liberal just as far as they can spit their own self-interest. Fuck ’em.
“Brocialist” is pretty funny, but I’m not sure that “men on the Left who aren’t particularly feminist” describes the anti-feminist contingent within atheism all that well — most of them seem to have more Rightist politics.
I propose the term “librotarian” as the Rightist counterpart of “brocialist”. As in, “I was excited to go to my local Skeptics’ meetup, but when I got there, it was just a bunch of brocialists and librotarians arguing with each other, so I left early.”
RE the SJW phenomenon:
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/06/15/endfathersday-trolls-being-trolls-or-black-propaganda-designed-to-tear-apart-feminism/
What is it now? Is Bro too nice a word to use for guys who send rape threats or is it too bad a word to use for those “good guys” who just don’t think that women are really people?
Anyway, I grew up in that subculture and in my experience they ar interested in advancing women as far as it makes their own lives easier. That also explains why they are always in favour of liberating women’s bodies and sexuality. Boobs to look at, bodies to fuck with no responsibility whatsoever.
“Stalemate” indeed. Hate versus hate in the misogyny/misandry war.
I’ve seen SJW used as an insult pretty frequently by otherwise progressive dudes, apparently to show their superiority to “Tumblr feminists” and other people who might be young or enthusiastic about their causes. The implication is that the so-called SJW’s freak out over the trivial (i.e. things the dudes don’t want to change or address) or otherwise take things too far. There’s a lot of applying the most extreme examples to everyone.
Personally, for the left-leaning types at least, it’s mostly an attempt to either show themselves as intellectually superior, or to deflect from examining biases they’re happy to hold on to.
Get lost, Mark. You’re a loyal member of team misogyny, so go away.
I was introduced to the term SJW in a community that I am taking a break from. It’s supposed to mean “extreme advocate of social justice” that either is worrying about something that is not really a problem, or who is over-reacting to a social problem disproportionately.
The problem is that I never see it getting applied to anything that is worth the label even if such people probably exist. It’s usually used qualitatively by people saying how they feel about an example of social justice. But “feelings about X’ statements are only opinions, arguments need some kind of support. It’s still a situation I’m trying to figure out how to deal with successfully because a persons feelings are legitimate as real feelings, but they still need to be expressed in terms of what they are seeing to be convincing of anything else. If they can’t do that they are only acting politically, and too often are simply trying to get other people to stop complaining, or trying to make the issue seem less important.
I’m torn on the “bro” issue. Too often the prefix is attached to things that are bad gender-wise. But it has some useful applications that aren’t so bad when pushing gender roles in non-traditional directions.
Geeze Ophelia, you’re so divisive.
(Yes, that’s snark.)
One of the tricky things about the SJW concept is that the SJW is generally not actually wrong. When used by hostile right wingers, it’s obvious. When used as an insult within the progressive movement, it’s about disproportionate response (as Brony notes). The anti-circumcision warriors described recently on Pandagon & Pharyngula are a good case in point. Also PETA.
It’s not about misidentification of an issue, but about misusing it or misrepsonding. Dear Muslima-ing; both tone-trolling AND anti-tone-trolling, misc-splaining, all sorts of things like that can be involved. You actually have to think about it and decide for yourself if the SJW accusation is true.
Oh noes! Independent thinking! HIVEMINDS ASSPLODE!
@16
It’s not so much the cause that makes a SJW, it’s using the cause as a cover for your horrible personality or questionable aims.
Maybe a more specific typology would help.
Like, you get the wannabes, who want to belong to minorities without any of their actual problems. Of course being 1/64 something and therefore not boring old white (even as you look nothing like your alleged ancestor, know nothing of their culture and can’t be arsed to learn the language) is an American tradition that long predates the SJW. But they’ve been creative and invented new things like demisexuality, enabling anyone who does not want to fuck anything that moves to claim to be kind of sort of queer.
Reading the above, I get the impression that one person’s justice is another’s outrageous effrontery and violation of personal privilege.
Can we not try to figure out just what group of people actually deserves to be called “SJW”? It’s like trying to figure out which feminists actually deserve to be called “feminazis.” Even if some feminists are abhorrent people (such as TERFs), other feminists should not adopt a term used to belittle any and all feminists. It will make anti-feminists feel validated in their hate of feminists to see the rhetoric of their side being used by feminists against feminists. Same sort of deal with “SJW”—let the anti-SJs have it. Internal criticism should not enable external detractors.
@ Alethea Kuiper-Belt 16
I see it being used in the same way by people who are obviously against the proposed social justice politics as well. It’s become an object-word with those folks that stops thought by it’s use as a conclusion. “SWJ” is a conclusion that one is not to be taken seriously and seems to correlate with “idiot”, “rabblerouser”, and “oversensitive”. Compare with how many in the MRM use “feminist”, or how “socialist” will shut down the brain of many conservatives. Words used in this way are objects of dismissal and the accompanying rhetoric attempts to either dismiss, suppress, or distract.
@ A. Noyd 19
Yes but that depends on who you are interacting with. For any group the first best option is to look at the claims and see if they have support. The claims and behavior of TERFs for example don’t really look like reality and the extreme social behavior of some of them seem to betray the fact that they don’t have a lot of support via facts (social behavior is what they are left with absent facts).
If you are facing off with one of the people using SWJ as a word of dismissal, think of the audience and do the same as above. You can be forgiven for more “colorful rhetoric” and dissection of their dishonesty (when they give you permission via their actions) as long as you give the audience something solid.
A more reasonable discussion partner will let you just talk about the info.
If it’s one of those types that use the word as an object of dismissal you are better
Ignore that last sentence.
Brony (#20)
The point is, feminists should never use “feminazi,” no matter who we’re interacting with. Pro-social justice people should never use “SJW” no matter who we’re interacting with.¹ We should adopt the position that, as far as we’re concerned, there is no such thing as a “feminazi” or a “SJW.” Nobody should be called those things, not even irrational extremists. They are only ever “objects of dismissal” (as you put it). If we want to label or criticize people on our side, we can use words that don’t let haters feel like there’s some kind of substance to their own complaints.
………….
¹ I don’t mean talking about the words and what other people mean by them. Not everyone here is stopping there, though.
Sigh, Where to even begin? The article by the feminist Amber A’ Lee Frost is not about whether to “dismiss outright” brocialists as Brian Dominick asserts, it’s about some versions of feminism and their wariness of quantitative analysis and hard economics as the purview of intellectual patriarchy and the “brocialist.” Frost’s piece isn’t even secondarily about rape threats, and Frost declares the use of the term bro to be exceedingly vague:
“Much like the hipster, the bro is a blank slate. Nearly any characteristic can be conveniently attributed to the bro. Writing a book of careful and painstaking study could make one a bro, as could the evaluation of such a book by a poetry-loving Brooklyn dad on lefty radio. . .
Bros certainly inhabit intellectual circles, but this recent surge in the term is so often a misapplication of feminism, one that counterintuitively genders intellect and vilifies ambitious intellectual aspirations. To invoke a decidedly macho metaphor, you’re going to want a good claw-hammer whether it’s a demolition or a construction job. And you’re certainly going to want data for any significant leftist project — Audre Lorde wasn’t denouncing math when she referred to “the master’s tools.”
Whatever the dubious populist cultural trends might suggest, radicals, especially feminist radicals, should not be eschewing quantitative scholarship. We should be engaging with it, critiquing it, and expropriating it from the broterie.”
Is this really an objectionable conclusion? Ophelia, have you had a chance to read the article yet? You can’t understand Frost’s context, and why it works for her argument, without actually having read the piece.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/06/bro-bash/
@ A.Noyd 22
It’s probably better to deny the words usefulness and to refuse to use it. If it’s use is primarily in dismissing others It’s probably just better to refuse to play their game.
But it still gets difficult when the word can represent something that has a conceptual existence, the people using the word do so because it’s useful and inventing words of dismissal is a general human behavior. It’s a general behavior worth keeping in mind strategically. Since the people using the words to dismiss others are in fact displaying a stereotyped behavior of their own in order to dismiss they are the ones more deserving of a word. A general term of behavior like engaging in an attempt at “rhetorical banishment” and are acting like aggrieved exorcists?
Brony (#24)
Gosh, it’s almost like there’s a whole term or something we can use to talk about that behavior. Who knew?
These epithets might be useful as terms of abuse to people who want to shut someone down as an “extremist” rather than entertain any arguments, but that doesn’t mean the terms have any deeper conceptual existence. The bigots who use them might believe otherwise, but try to get the bigots to explain what kind of extremism defines a “feminazi” or “SJW” and you’ll get a whole lot of vague, contradictory nothing. If the words ever manage to “represent something that has a conceptual existence,” it’s only a transitory accident.
Well that’s kind of embarrassing. I don’t know why ad hominem did not occur to me. It’s a better fit than what I was thinking about.
Maybe all the tone trolls who cry “ad hominem” at every thumbed nose and flipped bird have made it harder to recognize the real thing.