The second aspect here, "can't get laid," is an interesting one when considers the philosophies behind each group (insofar as they can be classified into groups).

During the 80's, 90's, and continuing on into our times, radical feminism has typically been about examining the power dynamics involving women, with a focus on sexual power and rape. You have certain subgroups of radical feminists like:

- Political Lesbian Feminists, who advocated for abstaining from sex with men because they viewed PiV sex as being inherently male-serving;
- Separatist Feminists, who advocated not associating with men at all, because they believed that even well-meaning men weren't able to make positive contributions for women and women's causes;
- and others, sharing the general belief that sex between a man and a woman cannot ever truly be consensual.

Taking that into consideration, it becomes easy to see why they believe statements like "Radical feminists are just pissed off ’cause they can’t get laid" to be entirely unacceptable: in their view, it's an attack on their fundamental beliefs.

(oh please God do note at this point that I don't hold any of the above beliefs because they're more than a little bit out there)

While radical feminism has (to my knowledge) lost a lot of momentum since the second wave, and while SJWs (a label I lovingly apply to myself) fall into a bunch of different groups, let's continue on and take as our example the radfem SJW who holds the above beliefs. When they translate "SJWs are ruining..." into "Why won't anyone have sex with me?!?" it's not offensive because, in their view, it's true. In their view, the person whose comments they're translating is angry because he can't rape women.

On the other side of the coin, you have a significant overlap between groups that overcomplain about SJWs (quockerwodger supporters, GamerGate, etc.) and people who subscribe to RedPill-esque philosophy, in which women are sex objects and the goal of women is to provide sex to a man. In this way, when we return to our example radfem SJW we can see that, in their view, anyone who complains about SJWs is a RedPiller who is angry that the SJWs are making it harder for them to rape women.

None of this is to say that our example here has solid ground to stand on, but it's not inconsistent within their own logic.

I find myself in the exceedingly odd position of being a person, who was raised in a liberal family, inculcated with liberal viewpoints, and whom, at one point, thought that Social Justice was perhaps one of the most noble humanistic causes.

Then there came a point, where nearly every cause I believed in seemed to be hijacked and dragged away, and it felt as if I was standing in the middle of bomb-scarred and rubble-strewn wasteland, and off in the distance, I could see the causes I once believed in now morphed into monsters that I could no longer recognise, and in some cases realised that they had turned into things I utterly despised, seeing them as being far worse than the original evil they were supposed to fight against in the first place.

This is the biggest reason why I have absolutely NO use for well over 95% of the folks I have met over the past five years or so, who identify themselves as 'Social Justice Warriors'. Obviously, since I don't know you on a personal level, and have never met you, I can't make such a call in your own case. You may very well reflect the sort of 'Social Justice Warrior' that I ran into ten or fifteen years ago, and whom I generally had a great deal of respect for.

So with all that said, I hope you can see and understand that there are indeed nuances in many of the arguments I am making, even when I deliberately embellish a viewpoint to make it clearer.

I'm reminded of one particular time that a radfem of the type you mentioned claimed that I wanted to 'rape' her. My reaction was indeed a: 'You're kidding, right?' double-take.

(oh God I just posted this and realized it's very very long, basically TL;DR I spend 10 minutes agreeing with you and explaining why like some wannabe University prof)

I do definitely understand that there are nuances to what you're saying. I've had, it seems, similar (albeit not identical) experiences.

As someone who made the (possibly regrettable) choice of delving pretty deep in to feminist activism and feminist research, and as someone who is a White dude of the homosexual variety, I've had to deal with a lot of issues of feminist social movements and feminist discourse re-centering themselves away from me. Even when discussing things like the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, the discussion shifted away from queer men, government policy, and medical practice, to groups that aren't often mentioned in that sort of discourse, e.g. lesbians, women partners of HIV+ men, women nurses, etc.

While it's important to take a step back and look at which groups are being excluded from certain discourse, I've found that students involved often conflate pointing out exclusion/oppression in social movements with actively making change. This is possibly one of the most problematic aspects I've found with how privilege is discussed these days, especially among younger folk and on the internet. Highlighting previously unseen privilege is (generally) only useful when:

- people are failing to acknowledge that other demographics are disadvantaged in this context;
- combined with strategies to combat how certain demographics are disadvantaged by systems;
- used to elevate the disadvantaged to compensate for the ways in which they're unfavoured.

Recentering social movements away from broader demographics (White people, gay men, cis people, middle-class people, etc) only because they possess certain degrees privilege can make those people feel better, but like you've said, it also creates immense discomfort for those who were previously among their ranks. Moreover, to (somewhat derisively) sum up the outcome:

Won five gold medals /
At Oppression Olympics /
They weigh heavily.

No one should want to be at the most intersected point of oppression, and yet, there's a certain pride that's come to be associated with it. The danger lies within needing that pride, as in the grand scheme of things, every feminist/SJW/social movement aims for its complete and utter destruction. There's a wonderful quote from metafeminist S. Ahmed that explains this much more succinctly than I can manage:

"So it is when feminism is no longer directed towards a critique of patriarchy or secured by the categories of 'women' or 'gender' that it is doing the most 'moving' work. The loss of such an object is not the failure of feminist activism, but is indicative of its capacity to move, or to become a movement."

Now, however, a lot of people have entrenched their identities within combating the patriarchy/being SJWs. In doing so, they happen to end up reinforcing the very power systems that they aim to destroy because they establish two categories, normative and transgressive. The latter, with which they identify, need to propagate the existence of normative structures so that their identity can continue to exist; and in the exact same way, the normative category needs the transgressive to exist so there can be a norm.

A potentially controversial example here would be the BLM action taken just last year in Toronto, Ontario (and the continuing discussion in Vancouver, BC) in which activists want to remove the police float because of negative police interactions between queer PoC, trans folk, and sex workers. They're not wrong; but banning police participation (in my woefully uninformed opinion) doesn't seem to effect positive change. Here, the movement recenters itself away from mainstream (gay/bi police officers, a lot of whom are White) so as to mark a "win" on the oppression scale, but negatively impacts the lives of all those who are even marginally involved.

Returning to the era AIDS crisis in SF (through which I did not live, so pardon me for any errors), I can see that the reason so much "moving work" was done was because the community focused primarily on taking care of each other and themselves. That's not to say that protest and politicking weren't a big part of it, of course, but what was put into practice was an ethic of care, rather than whatever it is we find now. Similarly, the second wave had a lot of focus on consciousness raising (domestic abuse, consensual sexual practice, rape awareness) which was about women taking care of themselves and others.

All this is to say that I think I'm in agreement with what you're saying here. As movements do actually achieve change, they splinter into two main groups: those who continue forward to tackle "new" issues (e.g. Trans rights/gender identity), and those who remain behind discussing things of old (e.g. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists). Even within those forward-pushing groups, people seem to have a lot less patience these days for disagreement, which leads to the oversimplification of opposing identities. While it might've made me feel better to imagine every anti-feminist as some basement-dwelling neckbeard-bearing neo-Nazi quockerwodger supporter, sooner or later I'd have to have faced the music that those people are normal people (albeit with unfortunate and frustrating political beliefs).

And as an aside, I like to call myself a SJW because the term is badass. Who doesn't want to be a motherfucking Warrior of the ages wielding a metaphorical flaming sword (pen) and leading the charge into a battle of discourse and politics? There's no prestige in "neckbeard" or "shill," but there sure is in "SJW."

Plus, I'm going to get called one anyway for saying that queer characters in video games is cool, so why not embrace the label?

Thank you for being able to see that. I tackle similar dangerous areas in my previous pieces 'Veruca Salt Goes to College' and 'Listen & Believe!'.

Some folks got what I was trying to do, and others (on BOTH sides of the spectrum) definitely did not, and lost their shit on me. :P

The two main things I'd like to address in your response are as follows: ...'I've found that students involved often conflate pointing out exclusion/oppression in social movements with actively making change...'

Typically, that is one of the biggest and most repulsive forms of virtue-signalling, and is one of the top ten things that far too many self-identified Social Justice Warriors do, which really turns off a lot of folks, who might otherwise support them, and listen to what they have to say.

There is a very big difference between being firm and forthright about one's beliefs, and being shrill and overbearing about them. One forces people to listen, and the other essentially forces them not to listen.


'...the movement recenters itself away from mainstream... {snip} ...so as to mark a "win" on the oppression scale, but negatively impacts the lives of all those who are even marginally involved...'


And yet another thing I have addressed in a few of my pieces, namely the idea that 'tearing down the oppressors' does not somehow, automatically 'lift up the oppressed'. All the wishful thinking in the entire universe ain't gonna make it so! You can't expect 'D' to magically follow 'A', and it's an ongoing theme throughout all of human history, all the way back to the Inquisition, when Abbott Amalric declared: 'Kill them all, God will know His own.'
I could spend an entire day giving hundreds of examples, and I imagine that you will have heard at least 3/4 of them yourself.

I think of the first time I saw the infamous Trigglypuff video, where she is shrieking: 'Get your hate speech off this campus!!!' and then, in her very next sentence: 'But this is about free speech!!!'
I instantly thought of Mandy Patinkin playing Inigo Montoya, saying: 'You keep saying that word... I don't think it means what you think it means!'

It's like: You want to see protest done the RIGHT way? Take a look at that guy, who followed the KKK rally, whilst playing mocking music on his tuba. THAT is the way you do it!