What are Oppression Olymptics?
People "competing" by claiming they are more oppressed than other people, because of the group they're in.
What is "check your privilege"?
In its worst form, the position that you're not allowed to have a view on an issue (or that any possible view is invalid) because you are not the oppressed party.
I've only started hearing the term "social justice" this November, in relation to Kill la Kill of all things (which, by the way, is insanely awesome), but I know I am pretty committed to the promotion and advancement of gender and racial equality.
Hah. The cluster I think of as SJW would, I'm pretty sure, say you couldn't possibly be committed to the advancement of gender equality if you have a positive view on Kill la Kill.
It is also because I selfishly want to be able to enjoy poetry, flowers, fashion, be a vegetarian, drive an electric car, and, why not, fuck a dude if I feel like it, among many other things, without getting harassed and belittled and found undesirable for it by men and women alike, without it diminishing my social status and getting in the way of me getting things done.
I think that's an inadequate rationalization. As a straight white male who assigns low probability to any of those changing, there is very little selfish benefit in joining the cause - and certainly a social cost to doing so.
Now, this said, I've been faced with embarassing situations as an "ally", where my allies were acting like utter jerks; I call them out on it and move on. The trick is not to be afraid of what the jerks think, to propose one's arguments in a fair-minded way and to stand against unfair-minded arguments, in stark opposition to the "arguments as soldiers" attitude. The fair-minded people will probably know you to be true, and you can only hope that your arguments can somehow get through the jerks' think, irrational, vindictive skulls (if they don't dismiss it outright as "demagogia" or "sophistry").
True enough. But some movements seem to have a high enough concentration of jerks (in your terms) that it's not worth engaging with them. I support at least some kinds of social justice, but I don't think engaging with a social justice movement would be productive.
As for pattern-matching, that's a heuristic that seems hard to avoid when you have little previous information on your interlocutor, and you've had experience before dealing with interlocutors who eventually turned out to be unreceptive jerks from the other side; it can be a very frustrating waste of time and effort and love, and I feel some sympathy for the people who overcomensate in unwelcomingness out of fear of this happening again.
I think the big problem is that it's unacceptable to apply the scientific method. When we find out that one group performs differently on an IQ test (say) from another, even considering the possibility that maybe one group is more intelligent than another is seen as unacceptable; we're expected to start from the axiom that all people are equal, and therefore conclude that the test is biased.
Heck, it's got to the point that many empirical facts are unacceptable. As much as we might wish it were otherwise, race predicts criminality even when we control for every other factor we can think of - but you can't say that openly. (I'm using race as an easy example, but there are similarly unsayable things on sex, sexuality and so forth)
As much as we might wish it were otherwise, race predicts criminality even when we control for every other factor we can think of - but you can't say that openly.
For real? That surprises me. Do you have a link to the relevant empirical research?
Now, it is said we all here pride ourselves on our intelligence, rationality, and moral sense. It is also said, however, that we are a fiercely independent bunch, and that we can let this pride of ours get the better of us. There have also been comments that the live communities that appear at meetups provide much more positive interactions than what goes on on this site's discussions; this might merit further investigation.
My point is; we've done a lot of research on how to do proper ethical and metaethical calculations, and on how to achieve self-empowerment and deal with our own akrasia, which is awesome. We've also done some work on matters of gender equality, which is very positive as well. But I haven't seen us do anything about the basic details of human interaction, what one would call "politeness" and "basic human decency". And I think it might be useful if we started tackling these, for our own sakes, that of those who surround us, and that of easing our mission along, which is, as I understand it so far, to save the world (from existential risk (at the hands of (unfriendly and self-modifying) artificial intelligence))).
What inspired me to propose this post was a video I just saw from Hank Green of the famed and fabled vlogbrothers. I hold these two individuals in very high esteem, and I would expect many here to share my feelings about them, on account of their values and sensibilities largely overlapping with ours; namely the sense that intelligence, knowledge and curiosity are awesome, and that intellectuals ought to use their power to help improve themselves and the world around them.
Here it is; I hope you enjoy it