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"Social Justice Warrior", commonly abbreviated as "SJW", is a pejorative term for a person expressing or promoting socially progressive views, particularly relating to social liberalism, political correctness or feminism. The accusation of being an SJW implies that a person is engaging in putatively disingenuous social justice arguments or activism to raise their personal reputation. In internet and video game culture the phrase is broadly associated with the Gamergate controversy and wider culture war fallout, including the 2015 Sad Puppies campaign that impacted the Hugo Awards.

There have been some attempts to rehabilitate and reclaim the phrase as a positive aspect of social justice activism.

Origin and meaning

In August 2015, the derogatory noun Social Justice Warrior was one of several new words and phrases added to Oxford Dictionaries. Discussing the new addition, Abby Ohlheiser wrote in The Washington Post that the term "social-justice warrior" or variations thereof had been used as a positive phrase in the past, and provided an example dating to 1991. She quoted Katherine Martin, the head of U.S. dictionaries at Oxford University Press, who said, “All of the examples I’ve seen until quite recently are lionizing the person”. Olheiser wrote that the negatively charged phrase had "emerged as the preferred term among the Gamergate movement for the people they believed to be their greatest enemies." In discussing the term's origin, Martin outlined the similarity with the negative use of "political correctness" to denigrate something, stating that “the perceived orthodoxy has prompted a backlash among people who feel their speech is being policed.”

In popular culture

Season 19 of the Comedy Central satirical comedy South Park was, according to many reviewers, a critique of "Social Justice Warriors". Milo Yiannopoulos, writing at Breitbart News Network, stated, "South Park, the grand old man of politically incorrect comedy, has finally taken on the social justice warriors." Crystal Bell wrote at MTV.com that "PC Principal is a Social Justice Warrior—with the demeanor of a foul-mouthed frat bro." David Berry described the new character in the National Post as "a frat boy-inflected social justice warrior who is always reminding brahs to check their privilege."

See also

• Feminazi
• Political correctness

References

1. ^ Matthew Rozsa. "5 reasons 2015 was the year of the social justice warrior (and why progressives should embrace the term)". Salon.
2. ^ Abby Ohlheiser (7 October 2015). "Why 'social justice warrior,' a Gamergate insult, is now a dictionary entry". Washington Post.
3. ^ Ringo, Allegra (28 August 2014). "Meet the Female Gamer Mascot Born of Anti-Feminist Internet Drama". Vice. In other words, SJWs don't hold strong principles, but they pretend to. The problem is, that's not a real category of people. It's simply a way to dismiss anyone who brings up social justice—and often those people are feminists. It's awfully convenient to have a term at the ready to dismiss women who bring up sexism, as in, 'You don't really care. As an SJW, you're just taking up this cause to make yourself look good!'
4. "Gamers Misogynistic? Some Certainly Are". Irish Times. 18 October 2014. The term "social justice warrior" GamerGate: A Closer Look At The Controversy Sweeping Video Games (surely a good thing) has been used pejoratively to describe those writers who choose to examine the social and political subtexts of contemporary video games
5. "The Only Guide to Gamergate You Will Ever Need to Read". The Washington Post. 14 October 2014. Retrieved 22 April 2015. ...'SJW,' for social justice warrior—a kind of shorthand insult for liberals and progressives.
6. Johnson, Eric (10 October 2014). "Understanding the Jargon of Gamergate". Re/code. Retrieved 22 April 2015. A Social Justice Warrior, or SJW, is any person, female or male, who argues online for political correctness or feminism. 'Social justice' may sound like a good thing to many of our readers, but the people who use this term only use it pejoratively.
7. Katy Waldman (8 April 2015). "2015 Hugo Awards: How the sad and rabid puppies took over the sci-fi nominations". Slate Magazine.
8. "Yale protests, social justice warriors waging culture war". NewsComAu. 27 November 2015.
9. "social justice warrior: definition of social justice warrior in Oxford dictionary (American English) (US)".
10. http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/09/17/south-park-just-declared-open-season-on-social-justice-warriors/
11. http://www.mtv.com/news/2273831/south-park-caitlyn-jenner-joke/
12. http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/how-south-park-pokes-fun-at-political-correctness-without-being-dismissive

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