Astral Codex Ten

SJWs

6 min read

SJWs

Article

SJWs is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between May 10, 2021 and December 07, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “the main complaint the anti-SJWs had was that they couldn’t talk about how much they hated SJWs”; ""SJWs aren’t bad because they get basic facts wrong""; “SJWs are identifying parts of the basic structure of society they think we are collectively obliged to change”. It most often appears alongside Google, Twitter, 4chan.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: May 10, 2021
  • Last seen: December 07, 2023

Appears In

None.

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars
May 10, 2021 · Original source
And most of the participants were into feminism in particular. The 2000s US was whiter than today, had worse Internet penetration of minority areas, and was in the early Obama era racial detente (did you know that in 2010, only 13% of Americans described themselves as very worried about race relations?). Even the most warlike of social justice warriors didn’t treat race as a big issue.
Inline links: only 13% of Americans
But around 2013-2014, someone came up with the term "SJW", and it took off. SJWs had obviously been a natural category for a while, but it had been weirdly hard to refer to them. It was really hard to say "I don’t like feminists", because the invariable retort was "feminism is just the belief that women are people, how can you be against that?". It was even harder to say something like "I'm against the vague category of thing including feminism, anti-racism, and LGBT activism". Remember that at this point all of this was internal to geeky internet culture, and everyone involved was more or less a liberal Democrat who agreed that all those concepts were in theory good. You couldn't go around in liberal democrat circles saying you were against LGBT activism. So even though there was the same kind of antipathy towards SJWs as today - more, really, because this was before they mellowed out - it was really hard to express.
The term "SJW" changed that. The term "Men's rights advocates" implied a focus on the problems of men, but the people involved were never really able to get interested in this. "Anti-SJW" claimed no focus other than on how SJWs were shrill and annoying, which had been most of these people's real concern all along. "Men are more oppressed than women" was a hard debate to win, but "SJWs are shrill and annoying" was … less hard. It also played well with mainstream and corporate concerns who didn't want to look like they were actually being sexist or racist, but who were happy to profit off meta-level disputes over who was or wasn't annoying. The word "SJW" didn't immediately let the opposition shed its stigma, but it started it on a clear path towards that point which would reach fruition two or three years later.
Highlights From The Comments On Justice Creep
March 24, 2022 · Original source
So in general, it seems that there’s a tension between two roles we what the ‘justice’ concept to have. On the one hand, we want to use it to identify things that ought to be changed. On the other hand, we want to be able to create *effective* change, and these goals can trade off against each other. SJWs are identifying parts of the basic structure of society they think we are collectively obliged to change. Scott is drawing attention to the effects this usage has on actually creating progress. In the background are a lot of unstated assumptions / conceptual holes about what kinds of explanations count as relevant, and what causal levers we have or don’t have available.
Even More Bay Area House Party
January 04, 2023 · Original source
“Well, it’s hardly a secret that there are a lot of woke SJWs in Silicon Valley these days. You don’t want them at your startup, because they’ll demand you change your corporate culture to accommodate them, then leave and do a tell-all interview in the New York Times. But you can’t refuse to hire them either, because then they’ll sue for discrimination. Your only hope is to never get them in your hiring pipeline at all. The good news is that this is easy. They refuse to work for any company that offends them. So as a CEO, one of the most important things you can do for your company is to say offensive things on Twitter about marginalized groups. But you’ve got to get it exactly right. Too little, and the woke people might not hear about it. Too much, and you’ll get in big trouble. Like, imagine if you said something transphobic, and then trans people refused to work for your company. Trying to run a tech company without trans women would be like trying to run a Broadway musical without Jews.”
What Ever Happened To Neoreaction?
December 07, 2023 · Original source
Anti-Wokeness. Whatever, you all know this one. In 2013, a lot of people thought they hated modernity, when they really just hated (as we called them then) “the SJWs”. Now there’s a broader anti-wokeness coalition that doesn’t require you to be a monarchist, and some recent conservative victories have cast doubt on the thesis that democracy automatically means more and more wokeness forever.