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Hello members of Know Your Meme!

I am an undergraduate anthropology student at the University of Arizona, and this semester I am doing a digital ethnography project on the term "Social Justice Warrior." I've seen the term on multiple websites and want to explore its use through an anthropological lens. This site uses the term, so I was hoping I could register an account and ask users about it.

So I guess this thread serves two purposes: An introduction to myself and a discussion on the term "Social Justice Warrior." I chose to post this in the General Discussion because I want the discussion to get off-topic, ethnography has a focus on informal conversation (I don't want you guys to simply answer my questions one by one, as if I were giving a sort of survey).

The first purpose is hardest for me because, honestly, I don't know quite how to introduce myself or the project I am trying to work on, because I don't know exactly what form the project is going to take. I might contribute to discussion on other parts of the forum, or this might be my only post. I might completely abandon the interest in the term "SJW" and focus on something else. I'm an undergrad who hasn't done ethnography before, let alone ethnography in a digital "place", so this is a learning experience (this also means I'm open to advice!).

The second purpose I think is pretty intuitive: Have you heard/scene the term "Social Justice Warrior"? If yes:

Where and when have you heard/scene it?

How would you define its meaning and its origins?

What is your personal opinion on the term?

Also, returning to the topic of a "digital ethnography" in general, I'd also like to know some more personal things about members of the forums. Things like:

How long have you been a member of this forum?

What brought you to make an account?

What other "online communities" have you been/ are you currently a part of?

Where are you from physically? How old are you? What's your gender? Ect (obviously only if you feel comfortable answering that stuff)

Do you know people in real life who are members of the same online communities as you?

What are you political and religious affiliations?

I hope this post doesn't come off as intrusive or anything, if it does please tell me bluntly and honestly. Thanks for reading this if you did!

Tl;dr: What does "Social Justice Warrior" mean? and Who are you in real life?

'SJW' as a term, has certainly evolved plenty across the internet and in different directions.

The majority of the world is now aware of what an SJW is, but people seem to be coming to different conclusions about what it means. And furthermore, who to agree with.

SJW's are seen in a negative light in parts of the internet where the term first came about to describe people needlessly rushing to the defense of others.

But in other parts of the world, most notably I find in mainstream media; an SJW is seen in positive light, as an induvidual that's rightfully concerned and respectful of his/her community

So what SJW means for society now is an important subject to update ourselves on. And we try to keep an updated record here. So I support you going out to conduct some research on what different demographics really consider an SJW to be. Such findings would be useful for us to document here.

Now to answer a few of these questions

Have you heard/scene the term “Social Justice Warrior”?

Everybody here has. We've documented the SJW phenomena in close detail and are more than aware of many select incidents regarding SJW's that may have swayed public opinion of it.

Where and when have you heard/scene it?

Here and on chat groups a few years back

How would you define its meaning and its origins?

As far as I know "SJW" started off as derogatory. It was not used to describe people with good morals or intentions to protect those who needed it. It was used to describe people who made unnecessary overreactions regarding political correctness and fighting to protect people who did not need or ask for protection.

The "SJW" was originally known for making very self-righteous and sometimes hypocritical accusations against [often benign] things, claiming them to be "offensive", even without evidence that anyone was really offended and/or oppressed. Doing this behavior on behalf of others (being offended for other people) was considered deplorable and even selfish (fighting for own glory instead of others rights)

Note that nothing is said of people who simply ask for "social justice" in the most genuine sense. "SJW" referred only to bad handling of social justice rather than social justice in general

What is your personal opinion on the term?

I stick with the original meaning. I only use "SJW" on people who exhibit very irrational behavior. Not on people with genuine concerns and good arguments on social justice

How long have you been a member of this forum?
What brought you to make an account?
Where are you from physically? How old are you? What’s your gender? Ect (obviously only if you feel comfortable answering that stuff)

See profile

What other “online communities” have you been/ are you currently a part of?

I prefer not to disclose

Do you know people in real life who are members of the same online communities as you?

No

What are you political and religious affiliations?

Centrist. Agnostic

Hope that helps

Thank you for the response! Sincerely, I posted a similar thread on Penny Arcade and the thread was locked, so I'm glad to have a moderator respond here first.

"Everybody here has. We’ve documented the SJW phenomena in close detail and are more than aware of many select incidents regarding SJW’s that may have swayed public opinion of it."

Yeah, this site is definitely an interesting source to ask because it is responsible for documenting internet phenomena, so I expect to see interesting responses from users (if I do get any responses :P )

Hey there! I'm working in the digital humanities (on ancient manuscripts, so in a pretty substantially different way), so I was really excited to see your post. One of the reasons I love KYM so much is because it endeavors to document internet culture, which I think (like it or not) is a pretty big facet of modern culture as a whole.

I myself am college-aged, economically centrist, socially bleeding heart liberal, Unitarian (recent offshoot of Christianity, basically). Lurked for a few years, but I actually came to post on account of the whole Gamer Gate fiasco. I'd like to think I'm pretty strongly pro-social justice, especially with respect to racial and gender issues. One of the reasons I signed up is because it saddened me how much "social justice" has been caught up with the idea of "social justice warriors."

Here's my understanding of the matter.

Social justice as a concept has, of course, been around for decades, whether we're talking about Catholics fighting for the rights of the poor in the early twentieth century or people of all social and religious groups fighting for civil rights over the last 60 or so years. The idea of social justice as my parents understood it and as they've taught me has been all about fighting subconscious biases and working to provide better opportunities for dispriveliged (sp?) parties.

"Social Justice Warriors," sadly, are the result of what happens when a group (any group, really) is infected with a dogmatic mindset. The term, as I've perceived it, is at most only a couple years old. The sort of people who are labeled with this term are usually young (15-30) whites of reasonably comfortable economic and social standing. They frequent media like tumblr and twitter the most and, in their understanding, try to foster understanding of and support for disprivileged parties. Those aims are by and large in line with my understanding of social justice.

Where the issue begins is when a lot of these young white people start imagining injuries to give themselves a false and undeserved sense of self righteousness. You'll see a lot of satirical images on KYM about how their movement is largely cisgendered white people talking over those whom they're supposed to be "helping." Unlike the true advocates of social justice whom I know, people who march in DC for LGBT rights or volunteer weekly to feed the poor or register voters, SJWs are perceived (whether this is true or not, I don't know) to be the sort who just complain on the internet to feel better than others.

I think the greatest issue with these people isn't the idea of social justice, but how they are taking an important movement and selfishly warping it to make it all about them. That's where the outrage comes from. I don't know how well that explains it. I'd be happy to elaborate if I left any points insufficiently attended to.

@awatteau

Sincerely, I posted a similar thread on Penny Arcade and the thread was locked,

Unsurprising, considering the poor reputation of social justice around casual forums, especially ones populated by gamers. You will have trouble getting their input

One of the results of #gamergate is very tired and exasperated gamers who don't want to discuss social justice anymore. They want to go back to gaming, not research.

So of course the mods on Penny Arcade (and others) will lock social justice related threads on sight to prevent the likely outcome trolling and flamewars. Similar boards will give you similar results

You might get more cooperative responses from sites that are more focused on social justice, but then you might get a bias set of results.

This site is interested in research and social justice culture for neutral reasons. So coming here was a good choice, although I can't say how much response you will get

I'd like to participate a bit in this thread if you're still interested in doing an ethnography regarding the term SJW, OP. Let's start with my introduction.

I'm a young male college undergrad in the Philippines. I'm Agnostic, and according to the political compass I'm a left-wing libertarian lying near a centrist position. I made an account to stay in the know regarding news and happenings on online communities. I am part of other online communities and in some of them -- KYM not included -- I know some people in real life.

Have you heard/scene the term “Social Justice Warrior”?

I've seen it yes. Online. I have never heard it in real life however, and only once did I talk to a friend about the term.

Where and when have you heard/scene it?

I've seen people exhibiting the behaviors of such in a certain online community, but never knew what to call them. Only when KYM made an entry where they were dubbed SJW did I finally have a name for them.

How would you define its meaning and its origins?

The term was most likely made to poke fun at and insult people who are known to be too zealous and loud with the whole 'social justice' mentality which a few months back has been a growing trend in certain online communities.

What is your personal opinion on the term?

Derogatory. I use it myself when a social justice 'activist' is being obnoxious, hypocritical, misinformed and unreasonable. They throw hissy fits all the time and it's hard to get a decent conversation with them. I consider myself a socially aware person (I think I'm more forgiving to social justice behavior than the average male gaming internet dweller) and as much as SJWs are made out to be the norm I actually know a handful of people who are into social justice that are reasonable and civil about their beliefs.

Good luck, OP. I think I answered everything nicely.

Howdy awatteau, welcome to KYM. I'm (relatively) new here as well, but I've learnt enough about the community to know that it's pretty strongly anti-SJW; this consensus tends to be weaker here in the forums and stronger in the comments sections, so you've chosen pretty much the best place on this site to post your survey. There's also less shitposting here, which helps.

I shall now answer your survey, since I, like all ponies human beings, enjoy talking about myself.

What other “online communities” have you been/ are you currently a part of?

I don't use standard social networking with the exception of tumblr, so that pretty much rules out half of the internet. I am a member of a very small (~300 active members) online flash gaming website with an extremely tightly-knit community, alongside being a user of FARK.com. That's about it, I think. Oh, and I also spend a lot of time poking nutjobs over at Breitbart News Network, if you count that as a "community".

What are you political and religious affiliations?

Christian atheist. Such a thing exists, trust me.
I'm a New Zealander, but I spend far more time following US politics than NZ politics due to the fact that NZ politicians never do anything interesting. I've been what one might call an Eisenhower Republican for as long as I can remember, but I've started shifting my stance on economics towards Post-Keynesianism recently. Woohoo deficits.

Where and when have you heard/scene it?

I was unaware of this "fringe" breed of social justice activists until I started using tumblr, and I did not know what they were called until I started using KYM. I've seen pretty much zero SJW activity or mention of the term "SJW" outside of tumblr and KYM.

How would you define its meaning and its origins?

I wouldn't be surprised if a social justice activist originally launched the term, likely by referring to themselves (unironically) as a "warrior" for social justice.
The term is simply used to identify someone who believes strongly in social justice, in my opinion. Thus people who are either opposed to social justice, or who are only moderately supportive of it (e.g. this site's community), are going to use the term negatively. It is kind of like the term "socialist"; liberals tend to be comfortable with it due to their relative proximity to it on the political spectrum, while it is undoubtedly an insult to conservatives. In other words, whether or not the term is a pejorative depends on your perspective.

What is your personal opinion on the term?

I reckon the tumblr community should try to reclaim it, kind of like how the LGBT movement reclaimed the word "gay". In the meantime, I am trying to avoid using it as much as possible. It honestly isn't all that bad a thing to call someone from my perspective, but the problem is that 95% of this site's userbase have drastically different perspectives. With the possible exception of folks like Twee, HorribleGhost, and a few others, calling someone a "SJW" in a conversation with a user of this site would be more or less poisoning the well.