Have you ever turned away from a cause you liked because of the behavior of its supporters?

I believe in social justice, which basically has as its goal (my own definition here) the equal treatment of all people and the removal of bigotry such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Pretty basic decent human behavior.

However there’s this entire class of extremist supporters that are known as “social justice warriors” who spend a lot of time doing slacktivism on tumblr, often with a terrible tone. For example, some of them actually believe that violence against straight white men is completely justified because some members of that group have oppressed minorities historically. It sucks, and it gives the social justice movement a terrible name.

Unfortunately they are an extremely loud vocal minority around certain parts of the internet, and I’ve had so much of it thrown in my face recently that I’m starting to form really bad associations in my mind. Like I’ll start reading a post about transgendered people’s rights, and I’ll cringe inwardly a little bit, just waiting for the line “die cis scum” to appear somewhere in the post (“cis” is a term that means gender-normative; people who are not trans). Usually it does not appear because most people are not fucking insane, but the ones who are insane are so loud that I’ve almost come to expect it.

It makes me sad that people are behaving this way, because they’re turning lots of completely rational and sensible people away from their cause by being fucking horrible.

In an effort to try to “fix” myself – to reverse these associations I’m beginning to develop – I installed an extension onto my browser last night to block certain websites from myself. I need to detox from it.

Yes, something similar happened to me during the anti-war protests on the early 70s. I did not believe in the war, but I did not believe in blocking freeways or closing down the campus. I would join marches until they turned violent or destructive, and then I would leave. Eventually, I stopped marching because of the extremists.

So just because I’m a straight white male I have to think about watching my back because I may have oppressed someone? For the record I think I’m reasonably open minded and I try to support diversity. I’m sarcastic and I don’t suffer fools well, so if someone wants to disagree with that fine. But I’ve never preached hate. That’s wrong on all levels.

I was in a food share group that had many activists whose behaviors I found unreasonable. I was a bit shocked at first, but didn’t turn from the group because I knew that the group’s identity and cause was different from any one of the group’s individual parts. We had different beliefs but still got along to do service work (and more).
They would, and still do, post stuff on Facebook that I find over the top. Some basically dedicating their whole lives to social justice and solidarity. They have been rude to cops, locked themselves to things, blocked traffic, gotten arrested, and more.
Regardless of their political dispositions, they’re all really nice people who I love being around. I trust them and know they’d help me if I needed it. I totally appreciate the things they do to help other people. I admire their courage—for all I know, they make up for all of the passive people in the world, like me right now unfortunately. They’re getting stuff done, and I’d side more with them over the people they are against.

Not “turned away” – but distanced myself from the supporters in question, definitely. I have two examples: Animal rights and anti-fascism.

While I am all for animal rights being expanded, I don’t agree with tabloid-like pictures by groups such as PETA. I am unable to take them seriously, which is frustrating because I do agree with some of their ideas.

Anti-fascism is, likewise, a cause I strongly support. However, some of the local groups are incredibly aggressive. They actively seek out people to beat up. I consider their violence just as problematic as that associated with neo-nazism..

There is a person in my place who is a total dick. Anything bad you can think of that can belong to a person is all in him: cruelty, ignorance, selfishness, narcissism… he has harmed many people. Of course I can’t like anyone like that. But there is that group on Facebook that was created for the sole purpose of taking him down. Sure they do point out all his bad behavior for everyone, but their method is a bit… extreme. They look for every detail of his private life and try to find fault with it. They compare him with equally bad people but ignore their faults and only focus on his. They even don’t bother to contradict themselves and leave a lot of important details unexplained just for the sake of ridiculing him. They are making themselves look no better than the man they hate.

I still don’t like that man though, but I don’t agree with those people either.

Bitcoin

I am a moderate Democrat who believes in fiscal responsibility.
When the Tea Party began, their stated goal was to make the government spend less. I am all for that.
It soon became obvious they were irresponsible. They used their stand on spending just to oppose Obama.

I’m extremely leery of all groups of people, especially if I support them. I’m cynical. The first thing I think of when you describe these “slactivists” (new word for me) is that they are provocateurs from the other side. They are so damaging to the cause that this must be so. The way to deal with them is to announce repeatedly the logic of this assumption and become accusatory and advise that they be shunned, ignored, their credibility destroyed, they must be made persona non-grata.

But what if you’re wrong? It doesn’t matter. Inciting violence will not only keep resourceful sympathizers away and conjure the worst kind of PR (word-of-mouth), it will bring all the defensive forces of this nation down upon individual orgs. The Middle Class abhors violence, they are afraid of it and they won’t tolerate it. If these slacktivists aren’t working for the enemies of freedom, equitable treatment under the law, and civil rights, then they might as well be as the effect is the same.

Things aren’t always what they seem. On campuses in the early 60’s and 70’s Freedom of Speech Movement supporters (a national movement that morphed into the anti-war movement and aligned with the civil rights and women’s movement) learned early that the first person in a political demonstration to pick up a rock, or a bottle, or incite any kind of violence was probably an FBI plant, a provocateur. It was important to the enemies of these political movements that none of their demonstrations ended peacefully, that they should be painted as uppity, violent Negroes, or drug-crazed hippie slackers, that they hated America (sound familiar?), and therefore had no valid political message.

Once these student demonstrators lost their naivete as to how dirty political opponents such as J. Edgar Hoover were, they were often able to liquidate each provocateur’s efforts to convert peaceful demonstrations into full-blown police riots (and thus a pro-establishment media feast).

This kind of thing was so prevalent that the national SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) printed material to advise each campus on how to run counter-intelligence operations, how to identify these people and expose them before they could do the movement harm, then destroy their credibility and make them impotent. Every movement should have functioning counter-intelligence, or they will leave themselves open to media disasters and be misinterpreted by the public.

Props to all of you in this thread for resisting the groupthink.

@Adirondackwannabe, I wouldn’t worry about it. These people are all talk (and only on the internet, no less) and no action.

@Mimishu1995 In the USA, we call that “campaigning”.

@Mariah Oh sure. And who left all sorts of messages on the board on the door to my office? :)

I’ve had a major falling out with Richard Dawkins, but I’m still a believer in Evolution and Evolutionary Biology. Is that what you mean? Perhaps not, because Evolution and Evolutionary Biology would still exist even if it weren’t for misogynistic, self-importantant, egotistical, blow-hards like Dawkins.

@cazzie Your last sentence made me think for some reason of Beck bailing on the Republican Party.

@Adirondackwannabe Your reference is completely lost on me. Who is Beck and which country’s Republican Party?

Sorry, Glenn Beck left the US Republican party because they aren’t radical enough. They’re too liberal in his opinion. I can send you a link if you want. but it isn’t really worth much more than a laugh.

Christianity.

Are you saying that the case of Evolutionary biology requires the reader to be even more misogynistic, egotistical and arrogant? Because that is EXACTLY the opposite. Dawkins becomes so blinded by his own emotions that he loses track of what he proposes to expound upon which is a detached and logical scientific perspective.

No, I wasn’t going anywhere that deep originally. But you took it to a really interesting plane and you really got it right. Beck is one of our hard core Right and scientific perspective is the last thing on their minds.

Actually the whole “anti straight/non transgendered” thing is starting to get to me too. Thankfully I see it more online than in real life, but it’s alarmingly freaky how being straight is almost a crime. These people should spend those energies on supporting gays and sex changers, instead of hating and bashing straights. I mean it’s not even a fucking cause or support at this point, it’s the same old hate that you see in racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. Does nothing for that which they claim to support.
Just goes to show that people seem to need something or someone to hate, it’s like it barely matters what we hate, so long as we get to hate something.

Thankfully there are kick ass people out there who truly support gay rights, and who stay on that. Can’t help but to admire.

Oh and frankly? That “God” page on Facebook? Has to be the most annoying page ever, ugh. sorry, I know everyone likes God, but it’s getting real tiresome Hey maybe he’ll see this, and insult me on his page, or even on here! :D

That’s kind of a catchy bumper sticker: “God Hates Symbeline.” You’ve become someone famous.

Oh hey, I’m putting that in my profile. :D Also it’s funny because my short description in the “about me” section for my Playstation profile is “God’s Mistake” haha.

@Mariah Sorry, didn’t mean to derail your thread. Back to haters.

PETA

My kid supported animal rights and looked at PETA…. and couldn’t stop laughing and making fun at them… and he was 9.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The leadership claims the same goals as Greenpeace, but through direct action. Their founder, Paul Watson, a hothead and drama queen, was thrown off the Greenpeace board of directors for being an asshole, then conned the Fund for Animals to finance a vessel for him. Bunch of whack jobs and felons. Their captains like to ram whaling ships, endangering the lives of their own crew and those of the poor hourly-wage bastards on board the victim vessel. They sabotage commercial seaways by removing aids to navigation which endangers everyone who uses them. These guys are fuckups.

The sad thing is that regular people confuse them with Greenpeace, an organization that now works internationally supporting and executing sea resource conservation programs through the U.N. and other sovereign nations. If it wasn’t for that TV reality show, Whale Wars, nobody would ever hear of the Sea Shepherds. But I suspect most people who’ve followed Sea Shepherd’s juvenile, violent and ineffective (as to effecting change) antics mistake them for Greenpeace, or connected to Greenpeace.

And PETA. What a bunch of damned fools. Where do they get their money? Who is that stupid? I like what the Nature Conservancy does, and the World Wildlife Fund. And I’ve supported Greenpeace from it’s beginning. Do your homework, make your choices and simply avoid the ones you know work against your particular wet of ethics.

@Symbeline Yep. I think the realization that I’m coming to is that hating a group’s haters is a very different thing from loving a group’s members and that I, personally, am going to commit to abandoning the former and adhering to the latter. I hope others can too.

It really is only online, thankfully. These people get all their bravery from the anonymous mask of a computer screen.

The only example I can think of from my “real life” is that I live with a guy who is bisexual who basically told me one time that he believes it’s immoral to be anything but bisexual, because you are then only omitting people because of their genitals, not because of who they are. I understand where he’s coming from but like….I can’t just choose to like girls, just as he can’t choose to not like guys. There’s nothing immoral about any sexual orientation and that really irked me.

No, but I have a close friend who is against abortion and distanced herself from the pro-lifers, because of some of the crazy shit they do.

What crazy shit do pro-lifers do?

@Dutchess_III Are you really asking? You haven’t heard of doctors who perform abortions being killed? Abortion clinics being burned down? Women being harassed on their way into an abortion clinic? You haven’t heard of any of this??

Indeed, this pro lifer stuff makes the news often. So killing a fetus is wrong, but killing a whole bunch of people by bombing an abortion clinic isn’t? Gotta love that logic, fuckin mad bastards.

I just thought of one thing that might fit this Q about myself. When the tea party first started up I was very interested, because since Reagan I was annoyed with government spending and a growing deficit (I was a teen during The Reagan years and just starting to pay attention to politics). I never was a part of the tea party, just interested when they first hit the scene. Then the group quickly morphed into right wing craziness and I knew that wasn’t for me. It was short lived that it probably shouldn’t count.

@Dutchess_III What @janbb said is what I was talking about. Things just as “small” as picketing and shouting at women was enough for my friend to become disgusted forget the bombs and murdering abortion doctors. Also, the politicians who babble about abortion and don’t know what the hell they are talking about or are willing to lie. Some women who walk into abortion clinics desperately want their babies. The wife of the guy I did my banking with in TN had to walk into a clinic with people shouting baby killer and they had tried for months to get pregnant. This was just 5–6 years ago.

The nerd culture in general. It’s just embarrassing. Not to mention that it’s mostly made of entitled white neckbeards who freak out at the idea of feminism (not the radical one as described in the OP). I have my own interests that can be best described as “nerdy,” but I’ll never align myself with those people.

@Michael_Huntington Spoken like a true nerd. :-)

The 99%ers. I lived only two train stops away but never went to Zuccotti Park or any rallies, though I was pretty tempted. I know they had their reasons for doing things in a decentralized way, but the messages were made too diffuse to actually get anything at all coherent across. Plus that whole hand-shaking thing in place of clapping struck me as incredibly stupid.

@wildpotato I was sympathetic as well, but they reminded me of the first Soviet orchestra right after the Bolshevik Revolution. In their revolutionary zeal to oust aristocrats, Tsarist intelligentsia and redundant leadership sinecures from all walks of life, they insisted upon having no conductor. It was a disaster, of course, they didn’t last long, and the first and last of their of their works, Prokofiev’s A Love for Three Oranges failed miserably in St. Petersburg, but went on to success with other orchestras in other lands with proper conductors.

Movements, orchestral or otherwise, need leadership, and OWS was no exception. Maybe in the next incarnation…

Great Question.

Yes.

Greenpeace.

Hello, my name is Zen. I would’‘ve liked to join, but you guys are insane.

@zenzen Yes, same here.

@zenzen and @dappled_leaves that ‘whale-wars’ show makes us laugh up a storm here.

Oh my god, the social justice warriors on Tumblr. I really do love Tumblr so much. It’s such a fun website with some really great people. There’s a lot of great humor and it’s a great place for me to meet people who are in the same fandoms I’m in. But these SJWs are just the worst!!! I used to call myself a feminist but I just can’t anymore. I have to use egalitarian now because the people on Tumblr ruined feminism for me, because now it’s just all about hurting men and “haha male tears lol men’s egos are so weak lmao”. But I’m a horrible person who deserves to die because I call myself an egalitarian instead of a feminist.

Ever heard of the term “manspreading”? Well, men’s pelvises are shaped differently than a woman’s, so their legs tend to angle outwards when they sit on trains and buses. SJWs say that this is oppressive because men are trying to assert dominance over women and “the patriarchy is in action!!!” They raised about $76K to try stop men from doing this. Instead of donating to women’s shelters or making safe houses for women in third world countries, they tried to stop men from sitting in a way biology makes them sit!!! They spend their money on “male tears” shirts and mugs. If you are a heterosexual, cis-gendered white male then you mean nothing and no matter how many good causes you fight for, you’re oppressive and deserve to die.

They constantly deny the fact then men are raped and a lot of domestic violence happens toward men and yet there is no men shelters. They deny the fact that a huge amount of men have body positivity issues and eating disorders. Some person made a post showing the unrealistic body expectations for men, and SJWS totally defaced the post and changed the pictures to Baby Grinch or anime characters. Who cares about men though right? Lmao male tears, their egos are so fragile!

Which, in reality, it’s their egos that are fragile! If you disagree with them and point out their hypocrisy, prepare for hundreds of death threats in your inbox! If you make fun of pumpkin spice lattes you’re being oppressive. Do you know what a bath bomb is? It’s something you put in your bath to make the water really cool looking. Well, a meme went around on Tumblr where people threw random stuff in their baths and added the comments “my new bath bomb from Lush!” and SJWs attacked them saying they were oppressive and were making fun of girls for liking bath bombs, when in reality bath bombs are a unisex product and the meme was started by a girl.

Oh yeah, and if you’re white you’re automatically racist and a horrible person. Even if you’ve done missionary work in third world countries or help out POC. You’re still horrible and racist. You’re responsible for slavery, besides the fact that US slave owners are dead and pretty much every single culture has owned slaves from time to time, and white slaves were sold in the Barbary slave trade. To SJWs, those things didn’t exist. POC are such perfect goddesses and remember we’re doing this for equality!!! When in reality by calling them goddesses and saying they can do no wrong is just dehumanizing and fetishizing. But whites are the only ones who can be racist. Let’s say a black person kills a white person because they’re white. That’s not racist, it’s prejudice, but we’re gonna totally ignore that this event happened because all whites are racist.

Oh yeah! If you make one mistake they’re going to dox you. Meaning, they will release all of your personal info online (name, address, phone number, work number, etc.). They will harass you and threaten you and send you death threats. They will find your mother’s phone number and harass her as well. There was a case when the SJWs doxxed someone and sent pornography to her employer and she was fired. And of course, this is all illegal, but they don’t care because “the evil white person got what’s coming for them!”
And if you’re straight or cisgendered your opinions automatically mean nothing and you deserve to die because you’re so oppressive.

Don’t get me wrong!!! I am a bisexual girl (who actually has been in a relationship with another girl), and I totally believe in equality. I realize that women have it worse, same with POC (in Western countries), and I realize LGBT+ members are extremely oppressed pretty much every where. I understand these issues, and it breaks my heart. I believe everyone is equal and deserves equal rights. But this isn’t the way to do it!!! We need to unite with love and win rights through love! If you dox people and send them death threats and completely dismiss the issues of other people, you’re pushing potential supporters away from your cause!

Ugh, sorry about the rant. I just really needed to get that off my chest.

Sorry you guys. I had a brain freeze. I misinterpreted it as the ”...crazy shit (pro choice) people do.”