Whoa

[chocolatepot]

Owen just quit his dishwashing job. They were already being illegal by refusing him breaks or dinner during 9hr shifts, but he found out that he was expected to stay tonight for 13hrs and would be fired if he didn't. So he quit. I'm trying to get him to report them to someone.

Okay, since this is a serious post, I know it's not really the done thing to bring things from an anon meme, but - I'm reading this thread on a post made recently to call out an incredibly toxic SJW. The incident that poster is referring to (also referred to here) is this. It just ... it just burns me up that multiple people, especially catvalente, can participate in these threads and still think they're the ones who've been offended and hard done by. And it makes me wonder, what is the point of trying with any -isms when there are so many people who quite clearly don't actually believe in their supposed principles? Because the fact that someone can say, "Really? You're really going to slap the hand of someone who loves what THEY'VE taken from an experience in a place that's foreign to where they came from [and which is less privileged on a global and local scale]?" and nobody bats an eyelash, in the same thread that someone saying, "I apologise if this seems unkind, but we are real, we are more than our myths and our past, we are more than a fantasy trend that's over and all the other things. ... But today you made a number of us feel deeply elided and uncomfortable. I'm sure this was an accident, but I'm not sure some of the commenters realise the cumulative effect they are having," gets repeatedly and viciously jumped on for attacking an innocent (American, whiny) woman - that tells me that no, really, there are plenty of people who are ... I want to say "lying", but that implies a kind of deliberateness that's not there. They are both

- not interested in considering the principles they're supposed to be upholding, but are completely ignorant about any situations that do not fit into the ones they've decided Count, and aggressively defend not having to consider those situations

and

- frighteningly happy being as vicious, insulting, personal, and/or weepy as they can think of, ignoring those of their own privileges that they've decided Don't Count (generally, class privilege and US privilege)

All of this is old news, really, but sometimes it just hits me like a ton of bricks how completely fucked-up the social justice discourse is. I'm sure it will pass, especially given the uptick in people publicly criticizing it, but for the present it makes me deeply unhappy.

Comments

[lliira]

I think that if you're not familiar with some of the personalities involved, it looks different

I think that is very true. And they both just showed up unfunny_fandom. Apparently winterfox has gotten involved in this now? Or was involved in something else somehow related? Idek, I haven't read the links, because just thinking about that gives me a headache.

Wait, is RH winterfox? Oh god. I had no idea.

[chocolatepot]

Yup, she is. I wasn't sure how many people were aware of her or I'd have mentioned that earlier.

[lliira]

I see her randomly all over the place, and have for years. She's fouled up gaming communities, book communities, feminist communities, and who the heck knows what else. I don't think she cares one bit about social justice; I think she just likes making other people feel like shit, period. She's one of those people who makes me wonder if she's in this to make all the rest of us look bad. And by "all the rest of us" I mean "human beings". When I see her posting comments somewhere, I don't post there, and I've never even had a personal run-in with her.

ETA: All of which is to say I obviously didn't read all the stuff you linked clearly. I have this annoying word problem because of Tramadol, or maybe because of my spinal cord being compressed all the time, where I think I totally understood something but didn't really. Anyway... yeah. I think Winterfox isn't an example of SJW rampaging, because I think she is basically a troll (iirc she didn't give a fig about social justice when she was rampaging through gaming sites years back), but the fact that she has so much support definitely highlights problems within SJ culture.

[chocolatepot]

It's okay, I understand! There were a few points when I was going "... am I not making much sense or did she not read what I linked?" but pain medication is an excellent reason.

[lliira]

The fact that we're now supposed to be okay with death threats over fiction shows how utterly toxic the atmosphere has become. There are still places that don't allow winterfox's kind of toxicity, but she's an example of how one nasty piece of work can destroy huge numbers of sites. I think the "tone argument" argument is a valuable one, but it's misused as often as it's properly used, and so many people use it as a shield for things that are completely unacceptable. Imo, there are too many rules in SJ that are applied with no subtlety or understanding of circumstances, and that creates a perfect atmosphere for trolls. And too many people get away with a holier-than-thou attitude, and think they and their friends are smarter and more sensitive and therefore better than everyone else.