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Is complaining about Tumblr, Feminists, "SJWs", "Offended crowd" hypocritical?

Last posted Aug 20, 2015 at 12:42AM EDT. Added Aug 13, 2015 at 05:53PM EDT
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I've seen a trend lately on this site and everywhere else. Ok everyone has trend because its near un avoidable: Making fun of Tumblr, Feminists, "SJWs", and the so called"Offended crowd". This has been going on since a bit before GamerGate started and is still strong today. Now looking through these waves of hate I've noticed how many of these people mostly complain about well, the complaint of that crowd itself mocking their dumb complaints, thats how it started out atleast…
Now days it seems mostly them complaining how they won't stop complaining about dumb petty things which to me is funny. Because what are these haters/"criticizers" doing essentially? Well complaining and whining about dumb petty things. But my were not really here for my opinion yet…
So I wanted to ask, is this practice of complaining about these kinds of people hypocritical?

Some people are annoyed that the dumb and petty complaints of the SJWs are taken seriously among certain circles because they want to be as politically correct as possible.

A moron is just a moron, but a moron with power…

It can get to the point of hypocrisy if you turn it into a cause, but it's more like when your grandpa goes off on a rant about how terrible everyone else under 80 is, there's not a whole lot of substance there so you're rolling your eyes and thinking shut up grandpa omg how are you even still alive. Imagine if people in power positions took your grandpa seriously.

But your grandpa eventually leaves after dinner, so you can deal with him when you have to. There is no escape from SJWs.

Not all complaints are equal. The "Offended Crowd" more or less complain about how the rest of the world doesn't confine itself into their world view/comfort zone, while the people complaining about the Offended Crowd are complaining about people who are trying to change the word to fit their world view.

The act of complaining itself is not the problem, it's the subject of what is being complained about. This is logic that has been used before by people making complaints that are facing opposition. It's sort of a Strawman, where they claim that the complaints against them are about their complaining, and not the subject of said complaint, then shout "Hypocrite!" because they then equalize the complaints as the same.

Not really, but it's important to highlight what you're actually against.

A major problem with the term "SJW" being thrown around is how liberally it is used. Some people seem to believe that anyone with an even slightly liberally leaning opinion on certain stances is an SJW.

For me, I have a pretty outlined way of identifying an SJW. For me, it's extremely strange when you see me, a well known and highly vocal liberal, suddenly called "conservative". To me, people who consider me an extremely conservative individual are people who are so deluded in their political beliefs that they are an "SJW". In addition, someone who has to claim that you are part of some majority to attempt to defraud your beliefs (white, cis, male, christian, ect.) is also an SJW, because they rely on incredulous debate tactics.

Now going to the question at hand… it's not hypocritical if you engage yourself properly. For example, a common mistake from Gamergate supporters (which I am guilty of myself, when I supported the movement last year) is that we should shut down SJW opinions because they're against free speech. Now, obviously the hypocrisy here is clear – you're defending free speech while trying to shut down someone else's free speech. However, if you instead worded it that you believe that journalists should follow a code to prevent bias, it would not be hypocritical – because you are saying that journalists should follow standards to provide the best quality content to their readers – their free speech is not bound elsewhere and only applies to offering a good service to people, and is not enforced (rather, it is encouraged due to better reviews and higher viewership).

In addition, people simply being offended by something does not warrant any changes. If we literally tried to change the world every time someone was offended, it would be extremely unstable. People are offended by other ways of life all the time. Mere offence is not enough. What is more important is how this offence is actually affecting other people's lives. This is something that's not really addressed a lot, so let me give a good example in the blind community.

On tumblr, I remember seeing a ridiculous post saying that you couldn't make blind jokes because it could "trigger" blind people. Clearly the writer of this thought that blind jokes were offensive based on this. However, them simply being offended is not enough. How do blind people actually get affected by this? Well, their feelings could be hurt, but let's be honest here – more often than not, blind people are making jokes about themselves, so your offence is not as important as the blind person's opinion, which is "lol who gives a shit" 90% of the time. However, a tumblr user being offended by actions from an employer that limit a blind person's task based on the false pretense that they couldn't do it is different – because it actually does affect someone else's lives.

In addition, it isn't hypocrisy to call someone out – as long as you're not doing the same thing back. If you're going around and saying that SJWs should die because they're saying white people should die, you're a hypocrite. But simply calling out SJWs on their behaviour isn't a hypocritical thing – it's needed in order to regulate opinions away from radicalism, which is what SJWs essentially are. These people exist because they refuse to self regulate through things like Devil's Advocate or Peer Review and thus are regulated by society pointing out their wrongdoings.

So in short, it isn't automatically hypocritical. It really depends on how you engage yourself – a lot of the activists on both sides can be just as slimy as each other.

Yes and no. It's true that the social justice crowd can be irrational and frustrating. Seeing major companies and celebrities cave to their whims is annoying. That said, their polar opposite is equally bad. SJWs might be irritating and it's worthwhile to point out when they do something stupid, but they are usually marginal enough to ignore. When you start seeing SJWs under your bed and feel the need to start a grand crusade against them, you're taking things too seriously. It was GamerGate that brought me around to this. Any criticism of media was met with accusations of being an SJW, as opposed to being an informed consumer with an opinion. My first taste of this was when I read well-researched articles criticizing the sexing up of Samus Aran's persona, only to discover the comments section was filled with people dismissing the article without tackling a single argument. Now I'm at the point where I tend to agree with feminists when a comic company does something stupid like let a pornographer design a variant cover, though asking for a ban goes too far. Choose your battles and communicate carefully.

Good arguments: "This comic cover is needlessly sexualized and may affect my future purchasing decisions." "Games pushing a left-wing social agenda have a track record of being dull and I would rather continue to play politically neutral games."

Bad arguments: "That guy who just landed a space probe on a moving astroid was wearing a sleazy shirt. Get him!" "The SJWs are taking away our games! Resist!"

yesyesyes.

The main thing is making fun of feminists getting upset about things that in MRA's eyes don't matter. They think feminists get offended, but those are the same guys who go on 3-day hate-filled meltdowns on reddit when fat hate place are banned.

Also a recent example, everybody hated the "SJWs" that made fun of the probe guy's shirt, but everybody who hated the "sjws" in that case got offended with the sipping on white tears shirt

Complaining about "SJWs" started as a campaign against hypocrites who used said label, but now the label is used to define any hypocrite or opposition a party has so it's begun to lose meaning to me.

I mean the whole issue with "SJWs" before was that they wanted great justice but lacked any empathy, but it's gotten to the point that discussions about "SJWs" lack any empathy towards said party. It's kind of a mess.

There is a very large difference between a petty complaint and a valid one. The "offended crowd" in question consists of the type of people that complain about very minor things like using the wrong pronouns, or nitpicking at media for not conforming to some made-up "moral code", while the ones complaining about the crowd itself are simply pointing out how stupid such complaints are. In truth, I don't think any of the hate towards the "offended crowd" has anything to do with the concept of social justice, it just so happens that a vast majority of petty complaints try to "justify" themselves by claiming to be "socially just", even if it has nothing to do with actual social equality. Actual social justice as a concept is something most everyone would like to have, I think, but unfortunately the term has lost its entire meaning due to the flood of people that have misinterpreted and abused it.

Hmmmm. I'm not entirely sure I would use the word "hypocritical" to describe it, but god damn am I sick and tired of seeing people complaining about the "Offended Crowd" (I honestly can't even bring myself to say "SJW" because it just makes me cringe seeing how much it's thrown around). I feel like the only time I'm even exposed to the things those kinds of people are saying is when it's reposted by someone who disagrees with it for dozens of people take the chance to gang up and criticize it. Even on tumblr, home of the offended people, I only ever have stuff from the offended crowd come across my dash when it's been reblogged by someone who disagrees with it and there are several comments under it harshly criticizing the OP. It's not necessarily a bad thing to criticize someone who is spouting horrible nonsense, but I feel like we are too often actively chasing and tracking down posts from the offended crowd just so we can vehemently criticize them, and often times we blame the SJWs for bad things happening on the internet even if they didn't really do anything. When we do that we are giving people like that more attention than they're worth and by extension give them more power. If we all ignored them and there were a few people here and there told them how stupid they are they would just lose steam (keep in mind most of these people are teenagers and/or only in their early 20s). But with so many people coming after them at once, they won't feel discouraged, they'll just feel like they're fighting this righteous battle and the fact that they're getting resistance is all the more reason to keep pushing. We are actively giving these people the attention they want and then wondering why they aren't going away.

When it comes down to it, when I'm seeing more people constantly complaining about offended people than I am seeing offended people, the people complaining start to look like the whiny little babies that they're criticizing

Here's my opinion on the matter: the reason why I hate sjw and that is because they're primarily TERFs. In order for me to be hypocritical on this I would have to start complaining about glbt rights being a "threat" to women; considering that I am bi and such that would incredibly stupid for me to complain about me wanting equal rights.

wat tambor wrote:

yesyesyes.

The main thing is making fun of feminists getting upset about things that in MRA's eyes don't matter. They think feminists get offended, but those are the same guys who go on 3-day hate-filled meltdowns on reddit when fat hate place are banned.

Also a recent example, everybody hated the "SJWs" that made fun of the probe guy's shirt, but everybody who hated the "sjws" in that case got offended with the sipping on white tears shirt

First you're assuming everyone opposed to feminism is MRA which is not true.

Secondly, your comparison between the two shirts is invalid, since there wasn't an entire twitter movement for the girl to get rid of her shirt as there was for the probe guy.

@jarbox
Slightly off topic, but speaking of the Rosetta mission to land on the comet they found 16 organic compounds on the comet including amino acids and sugars. . . . congratulations feminists you're officially forever going to be in history under "controversy" section for the first time we have ever found organic compounds outside of the earth. . . In a million years in school books there's going to be "however despite how groundbreaking the Rosetta mission was the general populace was more worried about the shirt of one of the scientists"

For any feminists here no offense, but your legitimacy in the long run is permanently shot forever because of that. How important is the Rosetta mission historically? To give an analogy let's say hypothetically we were to have first contact with aliens; that would be like running up to the aliens on live national television interrupting the delegates before they could give them a handshake and yelling "Misogyny! Help I'm being raped! Aliens are sexist!" and when the police carrying you off yelling "Triggered! I'm being oppressed!"

What do I mean by this? The Rosetta mission controversy is literally going to be on the fucking history books FOREVER; chances are in fifty years in schools the video of the scientist apologizing and crying is going to be shown cause it's going to be a part of history. The greatest scientific discovery in the last fifty years and probably going to be the greatest scientific discovery for probably several decades more and you literally put your worst foot out and now your worst is now a part of history permanently.

Last edited Aug 14, 2015 at 07:20PM EDT

@cb5, this is not the thread to be complaining about feminism. Nor is it the place to be discussing a controversy that happened months ago that people for some reason still feel the need to bring up every once in a while. Seriously, of all the controversies within the feminist movement, that's the one people cling to as the worst act any feminist has ever committed?

Also, I think it's highly presumptuous to say anything about the controversy would end up in history books. It might be a part of a feminism history class maybe. But any science or history class would be talking about the mission and the results of said mission and the controversy will at best end up as some sort of "fun fact" that floats around the internet

@Crimson Locks
It's not cause it's "the worst act" rather it was the most inappropriate timed to act like that.

You know how for 18 years the mars rovers have been trying to find evidence of organic components outside of the earth? Well now we know there are organic components outside of earth and it was instead found on a comet, but all the news about it was overshadowed by a tshirt. You can't just act like a jackass whenever something historically significant happens without people remembering that; if you act like a jackass to such a extent that it completely overshadows the historical event people are going to remember that.

To put it another way: don't try to attention whore if you don't want attention.

Tl:dr; if you act like a jackass with countless people watching you then don't complain about the consequences of your action cause it's your own fault.

jarbox wrote:

First you're assuming everyone opposed to feminism is MRA which is not true.

Secondly, your comparison between the two shirts is invalid, since there wasn't an entire twitter movement for the girl to get rid of her shirt as there was for the probe guy.

> there wasn’t an entire twitter movement for the girl to get rid of her shirt

there was a entire reddit movement

wat tambor wrote:

> there wasn’t an entire twitter movement for the girl to get rid of her shirt

there was a entire reddit movement

There was also a reddit movement to get rid of the guys shirt. So now we're back to square 1.

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cb5 wrote:

@jarbox
Slightly off topic, but speaking of the Rosetta mission to land on the comet they found 16 organic compounds on the comet including amino acids and sugars. . . . congratulations feminists you're officially forever going to be in history under "controversy" section for the first time we have ever found organic compounds outside of the earth. . . In a million years in school books there's going to be "however despite how groundbreaking the Rosetta mission was the general populace was more worried about the shirt of one of the scientists"

For any feminists here no offense, but your legitimacy in the long run is permanently shot forever because of that. How important is the Rosetta mission historically? To give an analogy let's say hypothetically we were to have first contact with aliens; that would be like running up to the aliens on live national television interrupting the delegates before they could give them a handshake and yelling "Misogyny! Help I'm being raped! Aliens are sexist!" and when the police carrying you off yelling "Triggered! I'm being oppressed!"

What do I mean by this? The Rosetta mission controversy is literally going to be on the fucking history books FOREVER; chances are in fifty years in schools the video of the scientist apologizing and crying is going to be shown cause it's going to be a part of history. The greatest scientific discovery in the last fifty years and probably going to be the greatest scientific discovery for probably several decades more and you literally put your worst foot out and now your worst is now a part of history permanently.

You could cure cancer, but it doesn't mean you can get away with murder. Similarly you can be part of a team that sends satellites to space it doesn't mean you can get away with wearing inappropriate shirts.

And FYI detecting some organic chemicals far away from earth isn't exactly ground breaking nor is it the greatest discovery of the decade. We already know that stars undergo nuclear reactions to create different elements and the Miller-Urey experiment shows that amino acids and sugars can be created from smaller molecules. This was more of a confirmation than anything and there are more important discoveries being made that can actually benefit humanity i.e.
Ebola vaccine from Canada seems to be working

Lastly if this discovery was so important then maybe you shouldn't wear an eye sore shirt that makes you stick out around other scientist dressed in sophisticated attire. What kind of message does that shirt send to girls that want to become scientists? He's literally wearing scantily dressed women.

On topic though, I don't think those people are hypocritical because they are making fun at the group, but don't generally have a cause. They are super annoying though because I hate when somebody has a sincere opinion and the response they get is "oh you're just a feminist" or "wow edgy". Because if you don't have the same view point as the general public, you must be an extremist. At least on the internet.

Last edited Aug 15, 2015 at 12:51PM EDT

Defending the stupid members of the feminist movement who decidied a piece of cloth was offensive becuase it depicts women that could be seen as attractive, while ignoring that this 1950's argument about obscene and inappropriate appearance was fhe same bullshit thst feminist fought so hard against.

Not the best decision one could have made.

@Windy
It's still debatable whether all the backlash against the shirt was called for or not. While I'm a feminist myself, I'm still on the "it was uncalled for and rude" side of the argument and I think he should have gotten away with this instead of being publicly humiliated. That's just my opinion though.
However, I don't condone him wearing this shirt because of his scientific discovery. I think it's a bit out of place to do so. I think he just had the right to show his own style, even in an formal environment, even in front of television (though I'd rather have had him at least say something about what he was wearing, some kind of psa, before talking about anything).

Last edited Aug 15, 2015 at 07:00PM EDT

@Tomberry

There's essentially no such thing as something that isn't "debatable". That doesn't mean that both sides have to be given equal credibility. We're talking about people who literally believe that they have the right to never feel even slightly uncomfortable, and will take absolutely every opportunity they can get to whip up an outraged mob. This guy was brought to tears over this- what do you think it takes to get that kind of a reaction out of someone?
And as for the "PSA" suggestion: Who in the hell spends so much time thinking about the shirt they put on in the morning? I guess if he'd bought it from the Women Are Worthless convention and it had "REPEAL THE 19TH AMENDMENT" emblazoned across the front it would have been reasonable to expect a pretty damn good explanation, but this was just something he got as a gift from one of his best friends (who, in case you didn't know, was of the opposite sex).

You could cure cancer, but it doesn’t mean you can get away with murder. Similarly you can be part of a team that sends satellites to space it doesn’t mean you can get away with wearing inappropriate shirts.

Because wearing a shirt and committing murder are in the same league, right?

Besides, the shirt was a gift from a friend of his. He wanted to wear something that meant a lot to him and she didn't mind at all.

Last edited Aug 15, 2015 at 05:01PM EDT

0.9999...=1 wrote:

@Tomberry

There's essentially no such thing as something that isn't "debatable". That doesn't mean that both sides have to be given equal credibility. We're talking about people who literally believe that they have the right to never feel even slightly uncomfortable, and will take absolutely every opportunity they can get to whip up an outraged mob. This guy was brought to tears over this- what do you think it takes to get that kind of a reaction out of someone?
And as for the "PSA" suggestion: Who in the hell spends so much time thinking about the shirt they put on in the morning? I guess if he'd bought it from the Women Are Worthless convention and it had "REPEAL THE 19TH AMENDMENT" emblazoned across the front it would have been reasonable to expect a pretty damn good explanation, but this was just something he got as a gift from one of his best friends (who, in case you didn't know, was of the opposite sex).

I made that article. I know fairly well what happened. I'm on his side. BUT, even though the comparison between wearing a shirt and comitting murder is downward ludicrous, you still have to think a bit about what you wear while appearing on TV. Or at least, if you suspect that your choice of attire is uncanny, just try to say something about it maybe.

Last edited Aug 15, 2015 at 05:33PM EDT

Tomberry wrote:

I made that article. I know fairly well what happened. I'm on his side. BUT, even though the comparison between wearing a shirt and comitting murder is downward ludicrous, you still have to think a bit about what you wear while appearing on TV. Or at least, if you suspect that your choice of attire is uncanny, just try to say something about it maybe.

I don't think it even crossed his mind. Of course, it was a little bit strange, and he certainly could have said something. But here's the deal- I've seen how some of these individuals operate. Nothing that came out of his mouth on that day would have mattered one iota. If anything, they would have found a way to use it against him.

If they were complaining about anything substantial I would be with them. But they spread false information because it is their job. Look at how many peddle the wage gap, falsified rape statistics, and get media shut down simply because they disagree with the message or content.

Why not complain about the number of starving people, then go out and actually try to help those people. Rather than just going on tumblr and blogging about how because Target doesn't have triple wide stalls for people in go-karts, just because they identify as characters from MarioKart, they must hate all women and minorities and try to get them shut down and destroy their reputation.

They continue to peddle this bullshit complaining and eventually people are just going to ignore them till they shut up and learn how the real world works.

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HolyCrapItsBob wrote:

You could cure cancer, but it doesn’t mean you can get away with murder. Similarly you can be part of a team that sends satellites to space it doesn’t mean you can get away with wearing inappropriate shirts.

Because wearing a shirt and committing murder are in the same league, right?

Besides, the shirt was a gift from a friend of his. He wanted to wear something that meant a lot to him and she didn't mind at all.

No they aren't. Where did I imply that? By your logic curing cancer and sending a satellite to space are in the same league (which, FYI, they are not). However saving millions of lives and being a murderer is ironic just as is being a public representative of an engineering accomplishment in the news and choosing the person wearing a shirt like that.

How old was his friend? Because if she is at least older than a child then her opinion doesn't matter how it affects her personally. There are so many campaigns out there that are trying to protect girls from the media perpetuating unrealistic stereotypes for women, that if you can't see how a guy wearing a shirt like that can send the wrong image to girls thinking of working in historically male dominated fields then you're beyond my help.

Defending the stupid members of the feminist movement who decidied a piece of cloth was offensive becuase it depicts women that could be seen as attractive, while ignoring that this 1950’s argument about obscene and inappropriate appearance was fhe same bullshit thst feminist fought so hard against.

Not the best decision one could have made.

That does sound like BS. Good thing I didn't say any of that.

Last edited Aug 16, 2015 at 12:26AM EDT
There are so many campaigns out there that are trying to protect girls from the media perpetuating unrealistic stereotypes for women

Unrealistic stereotypes? There are plenty of women that look like the ones on his shirt.

that if you can’t see how a guy wearing a shirt like that can send the wrong image to girls thinking of working in historically male dominated fields then you’re beyond my help.

If these girls are going to give up because they saw a guy wearing a silly shirt that one time then they probably weren't worth keeping anyway.

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jarbox wrote:

There are so many campaigns out there that are trying to protect girls from the media perpetuating unrealistic stereotypes for women

Unrealistic stereotypes? There are plenty of women that look like the ones on his shirt.

that if you can’t see how a guy wearing a shirt like that can send the wrong image to girls thinking of working in historically male dominated fields then you’re beyond my help.

If these girls are going to give up because they saw a guy wearing a silly shirt that one time then they probably weren't worth keeping anyway.

Unrealistic stereotypes? There are plenty of women that look like the ones on his shirt.

Maybe I should be more straightforward with my writing because it seems like I'm asking too much for people to put some thought as to what I'm saying. Since when did stereotypes mean exclusively looks? Since when did plenty of women mean the entire female audience. If you have an argument please make it. And by the way there's nothing wrong with owning a shirt like that, there's nothing wrong with walking down the street with a shirt like that. But there is something wrong with being a professional scientist/engineer, in a professional environment and wearing a shirt like that.

If these girls are going to give up because they saw a guy wearing a silly shirt that one time then they probably weren’t worth keeping anyway.

How humanitarian of you.

lisalombs wrote:

It can get to the point of hypocrisy if you turn it into a cause, but it's more like when your grandpa goes off on a rant about how terrible everyone else under 80 is, there's not a whole lot of substance there so you're rolling your eyes and thinking shut up grandpa omg how are you even still alive. Imagine if people in power positions took your grandpa seriously.

But your grandpa eventually leaves after dinner, so you can deal with him when you have to. There is no escape from SJWs.

"There is no escape from SJWs"

Couldn't you just not go on Tumblr? You only see the maniacal SJW stuff on this site because people repost it from Tumblr in the first place.

Genry wrote:

Shitposts are called that because the power they hold and threat they pose are both equal to the number of shits you give about them.

What about other people who give a shit who do have power over you?

Hypocritical? Certainly in a few instances. For example, when somebody uses the term after playing devil's advocate for men's rights, it clearly is (that's the most straightforward, because it meets every common criteria of the phrase while maintaining the most common context of its usage). It's lazy more than anything else, though. It means whatever the user wants it to be. Apparently feminists are SJWs. Conservatives are SJWs. Nazis are SJWs. MRAs are SJWs. Relief workers are SJWs. Every single person could be an SJW if you listen to the aggregate of enough people that actually use the term. It's identity politics in its least intelligent form, and that is a strong statement considering how intellectually bankrupt identity politics are.

Skeletor-sm

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