SJW Campus Insanity and its Causes

[Arctic]

I'm sure that you're all familiar with news reports about gender-neutral bathrooms, falsified rape claims and safe spaces with Play-Doh and bubbles. The severity of this phenomenon varies per university and country, but as a whole it's still a pretty disconcerning trend.

This thread is for discussion about how this culture of insanity came to be, and how it can continue to exist in an environment that was supposed to stimulate intellectual discussion.

One common claim I've heard is that the students are just entitled, because of a supposed culture of participation trophies that arose in the 90's. In practice, I think these claims have been exaggerrated, as most schools and institutions stopped handing out these trophies after primary school.

Personally, I think one of the main causes is that these students feel that their lives don't have any purpose, and cling to social justice narratives as a way to give moral meaning to their lives in a moral void left by postmodernism. Sadly, I have no statistics to back this up. What do you guys think?

EDIT: "Gender neutral bathrooms" is the wrong term, I meant bathrooms that are explicitly for trannies only.

 

[Bronchitis that Lingers]

I went into this in the internet cancer thread, but I think this one is more suitable for the rant I started (and tailored back a bit) in that post.

Basically, the people that we see today that are SJWs are, like you said, people that feel their lives don't have a purpose. They desperately cling to anything controversial because it gives them an identity and a group to relate with. For example, veganism has always been a thing, as well as gluten-free eating for people with Celiac's disease. These people adhered to a strict dietary schedule either because of their views on animal byproducts or their health, and that was that. There was no need to get up in a meat-eater's face, or ridicule someone who ate wheat because that was their choice, just as how it was the vegan/gluten free person's choice to eat the way that they do. It wasn't a trend yet, so no one got heated over it, and it was a much smaller movement.
All of the sudden, veganism and gluten-free eating blows up, and is everywhere on the internet. It's great because some people really do care about their diet and veganism or gluten-free has health benefits depending on their body's needs and get to socialize with others, or inform those who have health problems relating to meat/wheat consumption. However, what's not great is the massive amount of followers this movement has gained, and within those followers are compete misguided morons, just like with any group that enters the spotlight at a given time.

To be an SJW is to essentially say "you can't judge me, but I can judge you, because I follow certain trends that are considered politically correct by a group of people behind a computer screen." They're nothing but hypocrites, and (usually) attract people who don't have a strong foundation, are easily manipulated, or lack identity.
I'm not religious, but the line "He who is without sin, cast the first stone" applies perfectly here. SJWs are people who are full of sin in one way or another, and can't accept this realization. Therefore, they judge others for their "sins" to feel more comfortable being themselves, wether it be about food, gender, what have you. I'm not on Reddit/Tumbler/Facebook/Twitter/Shitter/Whateverfuck.com so I don't have as much insight to the trend as others, but from what I've seen from afar, most SJWs make their cause their entire life. There's no defining factor of who they were before they hopped on the bandwagon, and I guarantee whatever the next trend is, they'll hop on that too and completely forget that at one time in their life they were a hypervegan, just like how they forgot that they wore Tripp pants during their kindergoth stage in the 7th grade.

 

[PantsOfDesire]

I'm sure people who went to university 20 years ago, at least in the UK, will recall the fondness for lefty thinking. I was steeped in marxism and was looking to join the socialist society. I walked out of the first meeting because I realised this was a bunch of twats who had no bloody idea at all how anything worked or how to actually make broken things work. Had I known then what I know now then I'd have left far sooner. It was trendy back then to be involved in causes - even if that involvement was nothing more than turning up for a good time at a "protest" march. Another thing that put me off was when the Student Union had organised busses for people to go protest something or other, and their signs billed it as being a fun day out. They live in a strange parallel world where they quickly learn a lot of stuff, but don't have the practical experience to properly evaluate this information or understand how it can be applied.

Age is probably a factor. Consider that we have large numbers of inexperienced people being put together. For many this is their first time away from home, which is quite common for universities in the UK. They're building new social networks, and that makes them particularly malleable when it comes to picking up things to have in common with others. Also they have a false sense of independence through being away from home, but lack the experience of really having to work and support themselves. It's also a great opportunity to rebel. That and people want to be cool edge lords for appreciation from their peers, and in those settings a pretty shallow edginess will do just fine. I believe the development of the Internet accelerates this process by exposing people earlier to a lot of bad ideas and information they don't really understand.

 

[Arkangel]

As someone currently in college, and going to one in the middle of a VERY liberal-minded city, I have seen some of SJW stuff in action on campus, but strangely enough, It's not very prominent as one would think. Sure, I've seen a bunch of crazy stuff like gender neutral bathrooms and people running around saying that capitalism is bad and that socialism will fix all the worlds problems, but I've also seen plenty of crazy religious protesters and people trying to spread conspiracy theories. Then again, I'm studying computer science, so maybe my access to crazy is limited because of it (also, women are not systematically marginalized in the science and engineering places here).

If I had to guess as to why people are drawn to the SJW mentality, I'd say a big reason for it is ego. People who want to be noticed for doing something that is supposedly "good" and "revolutionary" usually attach themselves to these kinds of things as a platform to broadcast themselves. They don't really care too much about doing good so much as looking good.

 

[Da Big Staw]

It's really fucking amazing how in the past 7 years since i graduated it has permeated American universities. My sister's communication 101 class now spends half it's time talking about how females are oppressed... I talked to some kids in her European history class.. They know all these obscure European civil rights and leftists. Yet none of them knew who Neville Chamberlain or hilariously Margaret Thatcher was.

I think it's reaching a point where something has to be done about this or it's going to have a very negative effect on society n the long run. here's an article by a Harvard law professor who says law schools are no longer teaching rape law to students because students complain of triggering.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trouble-teaching-rape-law

 

[AnOminous]

I think it's reaching a point where something has to be done about this or it's going to have a very negative effect on society n the long run. here's an article by a Harvard law professor who says law schools are no longer teaching rape law to students because students complain of triggering.

I fairly recently (less than a decade ago) graduated from one of the most left-leaning law schools in the top 50, and we certainly learned rape law. I never even heard the word "triggering" until fairly recently on the Internet (except specifically referring to people with actual PTSD).

 

[Da Big Staw]

Apparently in New York and California College students are required to get permission every time they touch/kiss/fondle a person, else they are guilty of sexual assault.

It's like bizzarro world. Kids now go to college with hopes of having less freedom and more restrictions then they did as a minor under their parents.

http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/30/how-affirmative-consent-laws-criminalize-everyone/

I liked this quote

“There is one type of sexual relationship that . . . involves primarily explicit consent–the relationship between a prostitute and her (or his) clients, with exact sexual services to be provided determined by explicit agreement in advance.”

 

[Red_Rager]

I've done some SJW related-work on campus helping out with the campus safety project, working in the women's center but I was never deep in it. I chose to work at the women's center because I received work study money late and it looked like an easy place to score a job. Sure I hung up some consent day posters, but I never really internalized the meaning behind it. For me it was about trying to do the right thing and advocating against sexual assault. It seems like a "No duh" thing that you should make sure your partner is willing to get randy before unzipping the fly.

On the wage gap thing, I found it odd. Why would women be paid less then men for equal work? Was it really the work of the patriarchy or were there other factors overlooked. What professions were factored into the study? How many of those women attempted to negotiate higher pay? How does maternity leave or leaving work to take care of the children for a few years factor into the statistics? What percentage of women were in the profession and what were their occupation? However, if educated people are standing behind the statistics then I assumed there was truth behind the wage gap, but I had my doubts. By default, I like to give people the benefit of a doubt and assume a more benign reason or incompetence before jumping to conspiracy.

In short, I don't think I made a good SJW and until the Gamergate fiasco I never even heard of SJWs before. There is a lot of left wing propaganda on campus but keep your head down and focus on your studies and you should be fine. How deep you get mixed into the SJWs depends on how deep you dive in or how involved you are in campus politics. Seeing the GG fiasco was my wake-up call into what happens when the left goes too far. On the surface, it seems benign. We are going to fight oppression and make the world a better place. But why demonise an entire population of people for the sins of the past and the minority of the group? Aren't people just people? Why make people feel guilty for things beyond their control?

I think the SJWs are going way too far with how much they push their agenda. It is already a crime to force people to have sex and people should know it is wrong to rape others. No fucking duh. It is one thing to hang up posters and advocate awareness for an issue, but it is another thing to force people to take classes (granted online and on your own time) telling you that rape is wrong. That is rather condescending and I used my SJW work to opt-out of that shit. I don't think at my school things are too bad, and I wonder if this partially because at my school a good portion of the population are non-traditional students going back to school. These people have a life outside of acadamia and don't have the time to deal with this shit.

 

[Datiko]

There were a few articles about this in the WSJ. Basically Feminist theory split in the late 80's and early 90's. One side recognized that the struggle was largely over and established a goal to make the world equal for both genders. The other side are what we would consider the "proto-SJW"; they saw men as an enemy and decided feminism needed to make things better for women to make up for lost time.

From a purely academic standpoint the former won the arguments however the latter won the professorships. Shielded from the real world by tenure they began to exclusively teach their interpretation of feminism and identity politics which gave birth to successive generations of similar thinkers. As these soft sciences have no real economic value, many of the disciples re-entered academia perpetuating the cycle. Eventually more moderate or rational social thinkers were completely bred out of the system.

My problem is how western centric their worldview is. The arguments of a campus SJW amount more to spewing propaganda than any independent thought. I was speaking at a school on careers in information security and got the question "Does being a white man given you any advantages?". Some of the audience went absolutely apeshit when I told them that technically I am and have been a racial minority for my entire career and subject to discrimination. Apparently its ok to "invalidate" experiences which don't adhere to a given worldview.

 

[Pikimon]

Apparently in New York and California College students are required to get permission every time they touch/kiss/fondle a person, else they are guilty of sexual assault.

Speaking for California, at my and other Universities in the Los Angeles area this rule is either unheard of, or ignored.

 

[QI 541]

People being insane isn't really anything noteworthy. What's notable is that these people seem to be the ones running universities now... and a few other things.

Personal opinion: The defining trait of a SJW is "It's OK when we do it". For whatever reason, they get off on moral outrage. Perhaps they want to relive the glory days of the civil rights era? Or perhaps the idea of being brave freedom fighters battling oppression appeals to them? They declare everything as racist, sexist, and bigoted somehow, endlessly expanding their scope to fuel their need for moral outrage. Naturally, they never have to follow their own rules. They think themselves as the enlightened cultural saviors of humanity, here to bring society to a new golden age. And like God, they're above judgment. Who are you to judge SJWs when bigotry is defined by SJWs? What, you can't understand why it's bigotry when you do it and not when I do it? Well it's not my job to educate you, shitlord.

Also here's your daily dose of stupid.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...she-is-an-ethnic-minority-woman-10244520.html

 

[BatNapalm]

Shielded from the real world

This is pretty much the reason for SJWs in general.

 

[c-no]

Speaking for California, at my and other Universities in the Los Angeles this rule is either unheard of, or ignored.

Can I also step up and say it's something unheard at the community college I attend? Perhaps the no touching/kissing/fondling without permission rule is restricted to certain colleges.

 

[SJWs are cool]

"gender-neutral bathrooms, falsified rape claims and safe spaces with Play-Doh and bubbles"

one of these things is not like the others

 

[I AM STRAIGHT!!!!]

As someone else said this stuff isn't as prominent as you might think. The reports are fun to read so people click on them and those involved love attention. And some of the fun is in imagining what they will do next. For example, nowhere is it legally necessary to obtain written permission to kiss someone. That's fun to imagine but stupid to believe.

So I would not look for societal-level causes. Enjoy it and don't let it bother you.

 

[Ferls]

I go to a small school, so that may be a factor, but for all the people I've met there who do subscribe to social justice ideas, the campus LGBT group fell apart because so few students and faculty cared enough to actually be involved. The school is by no means LGBT-unfriendly, but between students and faculty you could count the members at each meeting on one hand most of the time. Most people don't even know the group exists, and when I talk to people they're generally pretty "eh" on anything deeper than "gay and trans bashing is bad". An out trans student I know still doesn't have most of their information changed accordingly. We have multiple unisex bathrooms, but they're ADA bathrooms and aren't outright "gender neutral". The schools nearby have varying LGBT presence on campus, but nothing too crazy from what I hear.
And honestly, I haven't even seen anything deeper in social justice other than a few invited speakers and workshops. We have those run of the mill groups like the LGBT group, the BSU, Amnesty International, the women's organization, etc. but I've never seen or heard of anything particularly deep.
As far as the school administration's side, Freshman have to do a quick online thing about sex and alcohol that does cover consent, and a group comes in to do a presentation about consent for freshman every year. (Personally, I hated them because they literally would try and goad the "wrong responses" out of people, and in a very mixed way. They would encourage you to victim blame just so they could shoot you down and make you feel like rape-enablers for telling them what they want to hear.) The school doesn't push any agenda otherwise, though. (Though, they do have a lot of good reasonable resources for anyone who needs help.)

I mean, my experience is just one experience, but I agree that it's probably more sensationalism than anything.

Personally, I think the SJW culture we see today is a mixture of guilt and fad. For a lot of kids today, logging on tumblr and seeing this stuff thrown around is their first exposure to injustice. And there are some actual good points to be made for some causes. And that's what draws you in. When you're young, it's difficult to sit down and think critically about the issues, especially when there's so much pressure by your peers to "be a good person". As someone who went around tumblr for a few rounds, I know that a lot of it is pressure. We've seen it with several "transgender" cows. It's imprinted into your mind that you are inherently ____-ist, and since you are privileged you have no right to question what the underprivileged say about their experience. Even if people aren't actively thinking about fitting in, it becomes very easily to be put in line by all the aggression and lack of empathy or mercy that goes around. You can't really think for yourself, or you'll be immediately outcasted. And because people become so serious, so critical, and so cynical, they start looking for reasons to be upset even if unintentionally. And then the people who are underprivileged (or claim to be) are generally unchallenged and have a hugbox to return to. The internet, especially tumblr itself, is definitely a major factor for the way that it allows information to be put out there by anyone and spread very easily with little challenge.

 

[RP 520]

At my college in particular the SJWs have only recently started to pop up and they failed pretty hard. They are made up of your millennials that believe everything they read on the internet and have a deep distrust for any legitimate news sources, mainly because they've become disenchanted by the bias from commentators and pundits that are on 24-hour news networks. Plus, I think there is usually in the young mind to gloss over real, boring news and focus more on sensationalism like you see with click-baits which catches their attention better.

This leads to them turning to places like tumblr and opinion sites like Salon and Gawker which don't have any checks or integrity. Combine this with radical teachers, at my college anyways it's old 60's radical socialists that HATE the U.S. for many misguided and maybe some legitimate reasons and never could get over the fact that the 1970's didn't see the fall of the U.S.

The teachers reinforce the students' views and cheer them on hoping the next generation will start some big leftist revolution and live out their "dream". The students on the other hand are then cast into a secret (fantasy) world where they're fighting some secret war for freedom on behest of the the poor minorities, gays, trans, kin, whatever, against the big, evil, opressive, militant, inherently racist, Capitalist (which is also inherently racist to them), corporate, U.S. Empire.

Story Time.

Fall of 2014 when the SJW group at my school started it was actually met with some positive response, they're first #blacklives matter protest (a "die-in") had 20-30 people. Then suddenly people started to realize a problem. All but maybe 5 or 6 of the protesters were white, and then people noticed that the movement was made up of mostly people from the arts building. It then started to sink in with the people that the movement wasn't some popular event but rather an orchestrated move by mostly theater department people to garner attention for themselves. This made people start to look at the meaning of "#blacklivesmatter" as a whole and determine the movement could be racist.

Then it started to become clear who these people really were as curious people started noting the group put "black lives matter" and protest signs in the windows of classrooms so that when a student would go to remove them (because they're a distraction) a theater person could then strike up an argument that there were racists on the campus and that there is a race problem. Things quieted down at the end of the semester and until the Baltimore case this year.

Take two with Baltimore, this time the SJW group (real name is "The Truth and Reconciliation Initiative") was more aggressive and scummy. They tried to manipulate the message using an anon-message board app called "yik-yak" claiming the group to be peaceful and loving despite people that knew them saying that they were opening advocating and supporting the riots on their twitters and tumblrs. There was apparently a fallout in the group where they lost members after they started talking down to people that disagreed with them claiming that they simply didn't know what oppression is like. Their charges of oppression and racism on the campus being a black student (who is a member of the group) claiming she was ignored when she brought up an idea in a mostly white classroom. There was a big backlash against the group this time and the head of the protest group manipulated the latest protest by telling no one except a select number of people so that there would be more blacks than white people. As a result the protest only had around 10 people. The biggie though was when it was revealed that the de-facto head of the movement had re-blogged posts on tumblr of quotes saying things such as "a revolution requires strong propaganda."

Though through their yik-yaks they claimed that their movement is entirely student lead, it is clear that it has become heavily controlled by one or two people and the theater professor who have been using increasingly dirty and dishonest tactics to try and make the movement popular while instead further alienating themselves.

 

[Teddy]

Berkeley has MANY ex hippie/60s radicals there. What's funny is that a lot of the students, liberal or not, dislike them. Even SJW-like people.

When there, We passed an abandoned middle school that had #blacklivesmatter PLASTERED on the building. Weird. I also saw a SJW basically saying that "transophobia" is the biggest problem we're facing. Not terrorism, droughts, or unemployment. Transophobia. Of course.

 

[Datiko]

Personal opinion: The defining trait of a SJW is "It's OK when we do it". [/MEDIA]

You have describe the modern American left. Members understand that they are lying and that lying is wrong. However they continue forward with knowing winks to one another because the end result is all that matters. It sickens me more than the tactics of the American right because people trying to learn more are conditioned with a system of plausible lies. The few that wake up get to be in on the joke.

"gender-neutral bathrooms

Removing gender specific bathrooms would kick ass though. Architects are hamstrung by requirements to include equal toilet facilities for each gender regardless of the makeup of the building. Public restrooms would be so much more efficient if both rooms were combined.

Weird. I also saw a SJW basically saying that "transophobia" is the biggest problem we're facing. Not terrorism, droughts, or unemployment. Transophobia. Of course.

Yeah dude. Get with the program.

 

[Red_Rager]

You have describe the modern American left. Members understand that they are lying and that lying is wrong. However they continue forward with knowing winks to one another because the end result is all that matters. It sickens me more than the tactics of the American right because people trying to learn more are conditioned with a system of plausible lies. The few that wake up get to be in on the joke.



Removing gender specific bathrooms would kick ass though. Architects are hamstrung by requirements to include equal toilet facilities for each gender regardless of the makeup of the building. Public restrooms would be so much more efficient if both rooms were combined.



Yeah dude. Get with the program.

There are several paths I see those who discover the the hypocrisy
- Disaffected/Grow up
- Plunging into Denile
- Going the opposite extreme