- 03/09/2020
- Category: Commentaries
Picture me this: a woman with bright red hair and black thick-framed glasses; she has a very displeased expression on her face, one that borders that anger. If the following lady is what you pictured, that means you have seen The Meme too.
Source: Google Images
There are many other meme variations, usually of a woman with short hair and extreme look of displeasure. These women are what the Internet, oftentimes with sarcasm and disdain, refers to as Social Justice Warrior or SJW for short.
According to Oxford Dictionaries[i], Social Justice Warrior is a derogatory noun for a person who expresses or promotes socially progressive views. Although Oxford Dictionaries does not elaborate further on what counts as socially progressive, but a research done by Heron, Belford, and Goker[ii] on sexism in the circuitry argue the views include feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism.
Obviously, it isn’t always that way. The term social justice warrior actually originates as a neutral or complimentary phrase used by Montreal Gazette article to describe a Quebec union activist Michel Chartrand back in 1991. But what journey does a simple term had gone through to then be placed as a derogatory noun in the Lexico? And what does this transition from neutral-complimentary word to a derogative one mean for the term ‘social justice warrior’ itself? These are the two questions that sparked this writing into life.
In the present time, the term SJW has settled to be one of the Internet’s common knowledge. It even has its own Wikipedia page, both in English and in Indonesian for everyone to access. But back in 2014-2015, it was all the rage. People question its existence; what does it mean? How does it come to be? Why did it come to be? Abby Ohlheiser, a reporter from The Washington Post, then proceeded to tell the complete history of how a Gamergate insult is now a dictionary entry[iii].
To summarize her amazingly comprehensive article, the term SJW came into the mainstream use during Gamergate, an online backlash against progressive influence, namely women in gaming and journalists, which supporters resorted to several troubling harassment campaigns against those progressive influence[iv].
But how do the supporters of Gamergate know the term SJW and use it as a pejorative? Do they just invent it themselves? According to KnowYourMeme[v], SJW’s first use as a pejorative is in 2009, and it comes from the Blogspot blog Social Justice Warriors: Do Not Engage that identifies SJWs as people who “rage, mob and dox in the belief that promoting identitarianism will make a better world.” In 2011, an Urban Dictionary entry for SJW was made, this time defining it as a derogatory term for those who loudly engage in arguments on the Internet to earn favor in social justice circles. I assume that this Urban Dictionary entry eventually made its way to the Gamergate supporters’ community.
I could go on tangents to explain how and why the term SJW exists since it is a fascinating and complex history, but I digress. The key takeaway from this summary is to show you that it was the Internet, specifically the creator of Social Justice Warriors: Do Not Engage, the Urban Dictionary user who submitted the entry of SJW, and the Gamergate supporters, who changed the term Social Justice Warrior from a neutral-complimentary term into a pejorative one we know today.
It is widely recognized that language plays a vital role in the transmission of human culture[vi]. Various articles have been written to affirm the universally-known theory of how language shapes one’s thoughts, behavior[vii], and even culture[viii]. George Orwell even tries to portray the extreme lengths of theory’s application on his critically-claimed dystopian fiction 1984. This theory then brought me to the second part of my question: what does this term’s transition imply?
Gusti Ayu Meisa, a writer for magdalene.co, portrays one of the best real-life concerns of how SJW’s tone transition poses a very real threat to discussions about women and feminism[ix]. Nowadays, we live in an increasingly phygitalized (physical-digital) life, where our online presence is an extension of our physical existence. Going by the theory of how language is part of what shapes our thoughts, behaviors, and eventually culture. I shudder to imagine that because Social Justice Warrior is now a pejorative word, it will ultimately scorn social justice as a topic of discussion online, and by extension, in the real world as well. And when that happens: it will mean death for social justice discussions entirely. The death of a topic will cease all efforts to mend everything wrong with it. It will also be forgotten. When society forgets about justice on societal level, more and more injustice will occur; this is why I see the term Social Justice Warrior as The Language of Injustice.
The Language of Injustice came in a lot of different forms. As long as a particular word or term actively perpetuates an ongoing injustice, then it is one. We must be careful not to engage on this sort of behavior that may eventually kill discussions on social justice by unpopularizing this term’s pejorative tone, and restore its neutrality once more.
Author: Irnasya Shafira
Editor: Amelinda Pandu Kusumaningtyas
[i] Accessed through https://www.lexico.com/definition/social_justice_warrior on 10 July 2020
[ii] Heron, M.J., Belford, P. and Goker, A., 2014. Sexism in the circuitry: female participation in male-dominated popular computer culture. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 44(4), pp.18-29.
[iii] Abby Ohlheiser. 2015. Why ‘social justice warrior,’ a Gamergate insult, is now a dictionary entry accessed from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/10/07/why-social-justice-warrior-a-gamergate-insult-is-now-a-dictionary-entry/ on 10 July 2020
[iv] To elaborate more on the Gamergate controversy, please read The Washington’s Post comprehensive telling of the subject matter at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/14/the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read/
[v] Accessed from https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/social-justice-warrior on 10 July 2020
[vi] Gelman, S.A. and Roberts, S.O., 2017. How language shapes the cultural inheritance of categories. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(30), pp.7900-7907.
[vii] Bernadine Racoma. 2018. Language Shapes the Way People Think and Behave accessed from https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/language-shapes-thinking/ on 10 July 2020
[viii] Benjamin Carlson. 2010. Yes, Language Does Shape Culture accessed from https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/07/yes-language-does-shape-culture/340451/ on 10 July 2020
[ix] Gusti Ayu Meisa. 2020. Memahami Definisi ‘Social Justice Warrior’ (SJWs) accessed from https://magdalene.co/story/memahami-definisi-social-justice-warrior-sjws on 10 July 2020
