When a college feminist decided, one cold night in 2014, to burn her personal copy of pseudofeminist Christina Hoff Sommers’ book The War Against Boys, the internet’s antifeminists responded as if Hitler himself had risen from the grave.
“Universities bring book-burning back, one page at a time,” declared a blogger at TheRebelMedia. After an extended comparison with the infamous book burning campaigns of the literal Nazis, he declared that “[t]he burning of Hoff Sommers’ book is a striking visual synecdoche for the malaise afflicting free expression across not only North American college campuses.” In a featured article, A Voice for Men described the burning as a “disturbing” example of “misandry in academia.”
On the Men’s Rights subreddit, meanwhile, one angry dude declared that
If you’re burning a book, you’re basically admitting to being not just a bigot, but one who doesn’t even have enough confidence in the strength of their own views to believe that they can stand up for themselves without needing to silence and censor those that oppose them.
If we set aside the fact that, unlike the Nazis, who confiscated the books they burned, a person burning their own copy of a book that is readily available to others is not actually censoring anything, he’s got a point.
So it’s interesting to see how many of the Internet’s antifeminsts and Anti-Social-Justice-Warrior-Warriors are embracing a proposal from one of their own to literally censor all academics who teach stuff they don’t like.
On Change.org, professional feminism-hater Carl Benjamin, known on YouTube as Sargon of Akkad, has started a petition demanding that “UNIVERSITIES” — presumably, every single one of them — immediately “Suspend Social Justice Courses” because he thinks that “social justice” professors are up to no good.
In vague but melodramatic language Benjamin proclaims that
Social justice has become scientifically illiterate, logically unsound, deeply bigoted and openly supremacist.
He doesn’t specify exactly what kind of supremacism he’s complaining about here; presumably not white.
Nor does he ever define exactly what courses count as “social justice courses.” There aren’t any departments of Social Justice that I’m aware of. [EDIT: Oops! Turns out there are.] Does Benjamin mean a tiny handful of, say, women’s studies courses taught by radical feminists? Or does he hope (at least in his wildest dreams) to take down the humanities and social sciences as a whole?
Social justice professors are indoctrinating young people into a pseudoscientific cult behind closed doors that is doing damage to their health, education and future.
Well, technically, I guess, virtually all college courses are taught “behind closed doors,” since the doors of lecture halls generally do get closed before class begins. Technically, I’m writing this post behind closed doors, because I don’t leave the doors of my apartment wide open. (People might wander in; the cats might wander out.) I suspect that Benjamin himself wrote up his petition behind closed doors!
Benjamin goes on to declare that
[s]ocial justice … has become another ideology fit only to pave the road to Hell, so it is time to turn around and choose another path that is concerned with reason, science and improving the lives of every human.
If only some evil Social Justice English professor has indoctrinated Benjamin in the devilish art of writing without resorting to hackneyed cliches.
But that’s pretty much all there is to Benjamin’s petition. Somehow, thought, the vagueness of Benjamin’s plan hasn’t stopped 9,878 people — so far — from signing the petition.
It is, however, possible that some of the signers are a little bit confused as to what exactly they’re signing.
Indeed, the top two most-liked comments on the petition, for example, were written by people who seem to think that Benjamin’s proposal to peremptorily censor all college courses that he thinks are excessively social-justicey is, somehow, a defense of free speech?
Benjamin has posted a video in which he explains his crusade in a little more detail. It’s possible that somewhere in it he answers the question of how exactly his plan to drive all professors he doesn’t like from all the college campuses in the world is actually a crusade for free speech.
Here’s the video in question:
Oops! Wrong video. Let me try again:
Huh. I don’t think that was it either.
No, that’s clearly not it.
Ok, ok. I found the real one here.
But it’s 40 minutes long. I sampled the first 2 seconds, and that was about all I could bring myself to watch. So I guess I’ll just have to resign myself to a life of servitude under the jackboots of the Social Justice warlords. Still, that’s a far better option than actually watching a Sargon of Akkad video all the way through.
@Dog:
It’s funny how you can link and directly quote something, and it’s still “taken out of context.”
Reminds me of all those times someone would read a passage from the Bible and ostensibly devout Christians would make that same exact complaint…even as the person had the opened Holy Bible in their hands.
I like to think of it as admission-by-denial: in claiming that someone else is supposedly taking something out of context – they are proving their lack of knowledge of something they support.
I dunno … context can be important. Sometimes people quote others, for instance, or speak with sarcasm. Taken out of context, your quote of Dog could make it seem like those were your words. The social context of the first-century Levant says some things about Matthew 15:21-28 that put a different light onto an exchange that, from our perspective, makes Jesus look like an immense racist dick.
The context that Dog provides doesn’t really change my opinion, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that someone claiming “context” is doing some equivalent of Godwining themselves.
*points at regford and laughs, and laughs, and laughs*
Oh my god how adorable are you. “Sweetie” and “kisses”.
Hahahahaha oh wow, a completely meaningless petition with exactly zero chance of having an effect on the world might have 200k totally legitimate and definitely not sock puppeted signatures! Oh no! You mean to tell me that around 1/20th of 1% of the population of America is a bunch of complete ignorant asshats?
And, yo, dog, not everyone who kills more than one person is a mass shooter. Mass shooter specifically means shooting up a bunch of people in one go. Which is, more or less exclusively, the province of white dudes.
Is this supposed to be an updated version of the “Feminism used to mean whatever Christina Hoff Sommers says it should mean, but now it’s twisted and evil, just ask Christina Hoff Sommers” meme, a stoned-ass failure of basic logic that started as “Well, Obama was a community planner and now he’s the God-Emperor Of SJWs, so clearly all SJWs are community planners,” or both?
Also that’s one hell of a gish gallop.
Let’s pick one at random, eh? Justin Blackshere- so he was likely mentally unstable, was fired from his job, and snapped. Looks like he went back to ask for his job back and things went south. That’s definitely a serial killer (sarcasm). Who’s redefining words here again?
@PoM:
Um, didn’t say it wasn’t – just that, in a situation like this, it is indicative of someone’s ignorance despite being a proponent to a cause.
Not sure how I implied it applied to every situation.
…What…?
I’m really confused.
I’m not taking about Biblical interpretation, I’m talking about claiming a direct quote from the scripture itself being called “out of context” even when the full context is actually given for what was read.
People who generally do that are, in a way, admitting their own ignorance by that kind of denial.
Which, again, I explained within the same comment as being in reference to those who deny the validity of someone quoting something fully and in context.
In fact, the first 2/3 of my comment went:
“It’s funny how you can link and directly quote something, and it’s still ‘taken out of context.’
Reminds me of all those times someone would read a passage from the Bible and ostensibly devout Christians would make that same exact complaint…even as the person had the opened Holy Bible in their hands.”
Isn’t it cute how Dog just happens to have a list of 57 black murderers? What is that even supposed to mean? I’m sure I could compile a similar list of white murderers if I was so inclined. Listing off Manson family members alone would get us a good chunk of the way there.
Also, I don’t need to click on that FBI link to know that it doesn’t include the n word like Dog’s post does. Number 7 on his list. He just snuck it right in there.
Why? I don’t know. He can’t exactly pretend he’s being logical and statistics and not completely racist after pulling that.
There’s also no succinct, universally uniform concept of “social justice,” “social justice warrior,” “free speech,” or even (as evinced by this argument in the first place) “censorship.”
Exactly @Katz; it sees diversity and nuance within said school of thought as a weakness. And here, I thought, essjaydubyas were bad because they were an ebil collectivist hivemind.
I was going to criticise the article as a whole for not watching the video or reading the sources but bemoaning who, exactly, Sargon is targeting with this petition.
Then I thought about the paragraph about “behind closed doors” meaning literal closed doors, and I gave up. That is an impressively facetious position to hold, and I cannot believe anyone would take anything you said seriously when you are clearly not prepared to present your opponents views reasonably.
This article can be debunked simply by pointing out the definition of censorship. Unless Sargon gained some sort of political power when I wasn’t looking.
Y’all, he’s talking about urban renewal. It’s a dog-whistle of a dog-whistle … a meta-whistle, if you will.
He’s saying that urban renewal is not only social justice, but the only valid kind of social justice.
I’ll just leave that there without further comment.
I’m guessing trolly thinks that we shouldn’t worry about anything until it gets bad enough. By what I dub “social triage logic”, we shouldn’t do anything to help people out unless they’re THE MOST oppressed they can be. Well, it doesn’t work like that. We can’t just say “well, women need both de facto and de jure equality, and so we can ONLY worry about them”. It’s the same logic that says not to help poor people out because most of them have refrigerators.
I’m not sure which thread it was but I saw several people here discussing the fact that many people in the MRA/racist/conservative intersection seem to get overly attached to surface patterns and symbols and don’t seem very able to understand the meaning well enough to apply it to a new context, or they become overly sensitive to the pattern/symbol to the exclusion of the underlying meaning (like flag burning). I think that I have found some patterns that are common to such people that are useful for identifying them for various purposes. They might make for a useful heuristic for such contextually challenged persons.
Assertion only, or “Cast X magic spell”.
They seem unable to do more than assert things about reality that they see as facts, but can’t or won’t demonstrate them. This comes in several forms.
1) Cast “That’s a fallacy”
Functionally the same as the above, they name drop logical fallacies like just saying the name of the fallacy is enough. Earlier in here “god of the gaps” was asserted. I’ve often seen “ad hominem” cast when the other person was applying insults or insulting characterizations in addition to arguments (and not in place of them). That last one often occurs when someone is pointing out sexism, racism or LGBTphobia.
2) Cast “Context”
They assert that you or someone else is taking someone out of context, but they can’t or won’t show you the information that adjusts the context.
3) Cast “Link”.
They dump a link to an article, blog post or video and assert that it shows something, but can’t or won’t explain how it changes anything. It’s up to the person dropping a link to show where in text, or what in a video changes the context. Anything else is asking you to read their minds or go sifting through something when any advocate worth the title will be ready to explain precisely how and where a source changes something.
http://img13.deviantart.net/d473/i/2013/020/d/2/discord_and_angel_by_really_unimportant-d5s3p21.png
@Dog
They above general comment was based on you. I’m not going to do your work for you, please explain how and where your links support your point. I’m not going to do your work for you and simply asserting that your links do any work on the comments of others here is an assertion.
How and where does your video demonstrate that social justice is supposed to be about urban planning and community building? I can accept that those are important to many areas of social justice, but I’m not going to simply accept an assertion that that is what social justice is supposed to be about and connect the dots on my own. If you can’t explain anything why should I believe you?
What is a “SocJus teacher” and why are they “preaching sheer bigotry and self-loathing”?
Why is it indoctrination and cult-like behavior?
What parts of what Sargon is saying indicate that this is about reform and not censorship?
When Dog (you keep glorious puppus out of this they’re my special boys) says “social justice teaches that straight white guys are the Devil”, he means “prejudice plus power”. But, here’s the thing. Social justice isn’t about how straight white guys ruin everything, not really. No, rather it’s about how some people are treated better by virtue of ______, without having to actually earn special treatment, it’s simply rewarded for being part of a certain group.
Perhaps related to this is how I’ve heard people in minority groups are actually the privileged ones because they get sympathy for being oppressed. That…isn’t the same as privilege. It isn’t. Moving on…
As for the accusations of being a cult, I think it’s related to the neoreactionary idea of “The Citadel (but not the one from Mass Effect or Half-Life 2)”. Namely, that there’s a certain culture held by progressives, and that culture is deeply entrenched within the mindsets and movements of progressive thinkers. People tend to defend their beliefs when threatened, and a progressive defending their beliefs is regarded as a “cult” by those who come in and try to attack progressive culture and ideals.
I hope this isn’t too rambly.
@Brony, Social Justice Cenobite:
Pretty much.
Days since people read the header: 0
We’re not here to “present [insert anti-feminist here]’s views ‘reasonably’.”, by which I can only assume you mean “you agree with [insert anti-feminist here]’s views and you don’t say a single thing against them”, because all we are doing is going “Dude, what? That wouldn’t work.”
Pointing out that Sargon’s being hella vague and demanding something that’s really silly and impossible to do because it’s based on his own opinions of what is and isn’t “bigoted” isn’t “being unreasonable”, it’s us using our own logic to point out that what he’s asking for is actually unreasonable.
Sargon not liking what “SJWs” have to say is all well and good, and honestly, we don’t care, but him asking for the monolith of UNIVERSITIES (which I can only assume means every UNIVERSITY in every city, country, and continent) to fire all the people he doesn’t agree with is asking for censorship. Not only that, he’s asking to be the one who sets the standards for who and who does not get to keep their jobs, whether he intends to or not.
He’s asking UNIVERSITIES (some of which are government institutions) to fire whole swaths of people because they say things he doesn’t like. He’s asking for the power to fire professors and teachers because he doesn’t personally agree with them, based on his own ideals of what is and isn’t “right”.
inb4 “SJWs get people fired all the time!!!!1!!!”: Actually, all most “SJWs” do is just point out bigoted behavior to their employer, who is a neutral third party, and then they get to decide whether keeping that person is good for business, based on proof provided. Usually, that consists of links and/or screencaps of what was said.
So, in the end, if a business decides to fire someone for doing bigoted shit online while attached to their name that they previously weren’t aware of, that’s the business’ decision, not the “SJWs” who pointed it out.
Huh.
That whistling sound you heard a few minutes ago was the point of this article flying over your head.
I’ve started a counter-petition: I would like The INTERNET to suspend Sargon of Akkad from making nonsensical petitions. Please take a look and I’d appreciate your support. Cheers. http://chn.ge/1NrwCOZ
Instead of jumping to conclusions, how about we listen to what sargon actually has to say? I’ve listened to his argument and proof that there is actual indoctrination going on in higher education.
If you have the time listen to the actual argument here (live stream of 2 hrs 50 minutes) or here(14 minutes).
He is not advocating to censor speech or any of the social justice courses(which are courses which only talk about social justice issues such as patriarchal theory, systemic racism or things the like) but rather to investigate how social justice courses are taught as they seem to convert people instead of relaying factual information and letting students see the evidence and use their reasoning to come to a conclusion. It does indeed seem that the social justice professors are advocating for the ideology instead of relaying information.
Also I see many comments here focusing on who sargon is (his education, and whether or not he has set foot on a campus, he only has following because he has a british accent, for example) instead of adressing his argument on it’s own merits. His argument boils down to: There is a great difference between teaching about ideology and teaching/advocating ideology. (Teaching about nazism and teaching/advocating nazism, teaching the facts vs teaching the interpretation of facts/non-facts)
I suspect that this comment may get deleted by an operator, if not, kudos, many sites could take an example.
Want to go in discussion on this? Send me a mail at [email protected] so that I will definately see your reply/objections. Hope y’all will engage someone who is being as intelectually honest as he can be. Thanks for the time.
Why are you so certain that they are not relaying factual information, and students are not using the evidence and their reasoning power to come to a conclusion with which you don’t agree?
If you’re disagreeing with people who are educated on the topic, maybe the one who lacks factual information is you.
Dog
http://memesvault.com/wp-content/uploads/I-Have-No-Idea-What-Im-Doing-Dog-02.jpg
Thanks. I needed the link so I could sign the petition. I wish it would have an effect, but however if you paid attention to the context of him saying “This is not really here to make a difference, but instead to let SJW’s know that ‘Wow, people disagree with you, maybe you should look into that because it might indicate something is wrong with your ideology.’ ” you’d know that this isn’t censoring anything because it can’t, chiefly due to the fact that this petition is mainly to indicate an issue with your broken ideological views.
^ I put the context right there so you all don’t go an strawman us like you SJW’s so love to do 🙂
I’m gonna go get a lot of my friends to sign this too just in spite of you totalitarian….. “people…..”
https://therationalists.org/2016/04/24/this-week-in-stupid-24042016-social-justice-is-a-cult-edition/
For those of you too lazy to bother to actually watch the video, citations.
You mean like that stupid “wage gap” that has been debunked time and time and time again.
Or the idea that culture is pro-rape… after the ridiculous support of the “victim” of UVA and Duke? You know, the absolute lies…
Or the BLM complaints about cops in their neighborhoods, when blacks commit nearly 50% of all violent crime. Oh and the funny thing? after driving the cops out, now they want them back because, surprise surprise, crime has skyrocketed in cities like Chicago…
And just because someone has a degree in something does not mean they are the end all be all. Again, let us look at this “wage gap” myth. Feminists love to tout this one. Even college educated ones. But this myth has been debunked time and time again by economists, statisticians, and even common sense (why hire a man when you can get away with hiring a woman for 30% less??? That is straight profit right there!).