Guest post: The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Social Justice Movements
Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany 9.
We have all seen countless lists outlining the various features of pseudoscience such as Bob Park’s “The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science”. Some of us have even written such lists ourselves. I thought it might be interesting to attempt something similar for Bogus Social Justice Movements (henceforth referred to as BSJMs). Examples of BSJMs include MRAs, incels, the dominant strand of trans rights activism, NAMBLA, the pro porn/pro “sex work” lobby etc*. Attempts to portray legitimate criticisms of Islamism as “Islamophobia” or portray legitimate criticisms of the Israeli occupation of Palestine as “antisemitism” can be understood in the same terms**. As with pseudoscience, there is no non-arbitrary place to “draw a line”, such that everything on one side is 100% legitimate social justice activism and everything on the other side is 100% bogus social justice activism. Rather than a sharp definition we must make do with a set of criteria. Most BSJMs will probably meet most of these criteria to some degree, but none has to meet all of them 100%. So, without further ado, I give you
The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Social Justice Movements
1. People vs. Ideas
• The goal of every legitimate social justice movement is to protect real live human beings from injustice and harm.
• BSJMs are usually more concerned with protecting ideas, behaviors, belief systems, ideologies, cultures, traditions, policies, or ways of life. Criticism of what people think, say, or do is re-interpreted as an attack on who they are.
2. Unstated Premises
• BSJMs make frequent appeals to non-specific “rights” that their opponents are accused of denying or violating. Even the most basic tenets of their cause are based on premises and definitions that are best left unspecified.
3. Dubious Connection to Harm
• Every legitimate social justice movement can provide endless examples of obvious, demonstrable injustice and harm.
• BSJMs make exaggerated claims of “harm”, as well as “oppression”, “hate”, “persecution”, “violence” etc. based on a Danish cartoon or the proper use of pronouns (!). The alleged “harm” only shows up at the other end of a long chain of impossibly sloppy inferences and extrapolations and stretching of word-meanings beyond the breaking point. Quite frequently the apocalyptic rhetoric boils down to the implicit threat that the alleged “victims” themselves will hurt themselves or others if they don’t get their way.
4. No Debate
• Every legitimate social justice movement is actively seeking to change hearts and minds through open debate. If anything, their opponents are the ones who are trying to shut down debate because their position is indefensible.
• BSJMs are more concerned with silencing dissent and forcing their views down people’s throats unexamined through intimidation and bullying. Anything other than blind, unconditional agreement in advance is spun as debating their “right to exist” (#2) etc.
5. Conflicts with Real Social Justice Movements
• No real social justice movement is attempting to make other oppressed or marginalized groups less safe from injustice or harm.
• What BSJMs call “oppression” usually boils down to other groups having rights on their own (the right to free speech, the right to leave the dominant religion, the right of lesbians to be uninterested in your “lady cock” etc.).
6. Appropriation/Forced Teaming
• BSJMs appropriate real social justice movements and claim monopoly on speaking in their name while being actively hostile to their goals (#5). Every right and protection gained by other marginalized groups is re-interpreted as belonging to the usurpers instead of the people for whom they were originally intended (and the people who did all the actual work fighting for them).
7. Institutional Capture
• Real social justice movement usually play with open cards.
• BSJMs are more inclined to work by stealth to capture institutions from the inside and change legislation with little or no meaningful debate or accountability (#4). One favorite strategy is sneaking weasel words into bills that were introduced to protect other groups (#6) and use them as a trojan horse for the BSJM’s own agenda.
* As I recently commented there was a time, not too long ago, when the same applied to smokers.
** This remains true even if we concede that bigotry and hate against Muslims and Jews is a real and very serious problem.
This one got me thinking about how groups’ competing interests and relative oppression relate to moral reasoning.
One can easily conceive of a case where a legitimate “social justice” movement would aim to make another group more subject to injustice or harm: the oppressors themselves. Exploiting another group provides them with reduced vulnerability to injustice and harm. Removing that exploitation then increases vulnerability. But there’s no reason to think that a group cannot be both oppressor and oppressed. If A oppresses B, and B oppresses C, then an SJM for C could justifiably attempt to make B more vulnerable to injustice or harm. If we allow even more complex relations such that B oppresses C in some respect while C oppresses B in another respect, then C’s SJM still has all the same justifications while also being and oppressor’s movement against the interests of the group it oppresses.
On the other hand, maybe the focus here should really be motive in a sort of double effect analysis. So a real SJM could potentially cause another group to be less insulated against injustice or harm, but the point is that it wouldn’t intend such an outcome. Perhaps a real SJM might even in some cases intend to make another group more vulnerable to injustice or harm, but only as a possibly unfortunate step toward its primary goal.
Just some musings and ponderings.
Nullius @1 So, Feminism harms men? LGB rights harm heterosexuals? Free Speech harms fascists? Not sure I’m following you here. Trans Activism actually does measurable harm to all those groups and others, they haven’t been able to put forth this movement without that trampling, as much as they try to disguise it as legitimate. (which I think was Bjarte’s point). Trans people are not as oppressed as the activists want us to think they are.
You just invented intersectionality. [chortle]
White women (Karens). Gay Republicans. Working class men who beat their wives. Etc.
What an excellent idea — makes me think. Some of this is spot on. But I’m wondering about the 1st point:
I think it’s the other way around. That is, of course social justice movements want to protect real live human beings from injustice and harm, but the illegitimate ones seem to be very light on advancing Ideas. When I was attacked on and eventually banned from an atheist blog for “transphobia,” one of the charges against me was that I was too cerebral and focused on concepts and definitions and coherent and cohesive arguments instead of paying attention to the PEOPLE. Trans ppl were suffering real harm: were being murdered; were suicidal; were living inauthentic lives which denied who they were and yet here was I calmly laying out the nature of rights and where they can conflict. Don’t people matter to me more than intellectual games about being “right?” Sad.
People Over Ideas is one reason for #4, the Warning Sign of No Debate. Criticisms of Islam hurt Muslims: Islamophobia. It also fits with Warning Sign #2: Unstated premises and definitions. We can’t define a “woman,” but we know if we are one. Over on Coyne’s site there’s a story about a professor accused of racism (among other things) for showing an R Crumb satirical cartoon making fun of Maoist China. Chinese woman holding Little Red Book happily being fondled by Chinese man as Glorious Parade goes by. They don’t know the context, they’re not exploring the reasons for making this particular point about totalitarian regimes and their propaganda. No — real live Asians today might be targeted by someone inspired on the gut level by looking at it so ‘nuff said.
When I think of genuine social justice movements which made an impact bettering lives they seem to be heavy on the ideas and principles and reasoning about them. The Enlightenment, for example. The movement which basically created the very idea of Human Rights is currently being rejected by people upset that some of the people behind it didn’t personally follow it consistently enough to give up their slaves. So much for Reason and Ideas, then. They don’t work. Let’s just find some oppressed people and come out swinging at whoever looks like they might be in the way.
twiliter:
You forget how pedantic I am. The phrase was “make [someone] less safe from injustice or harm.” Being the oppressor tends to come with benefits, like, oh, a generally safer, more comfortable life. Making someone stop being an oppressor would take away the benefits of being an oppressor. That’s a decrease in safety and comfort.
Ophelia:
As usual, there’s no hoodwinking Ophelia. That’s exactly why that particular bullet point gave me pause. (Not that I think Bjarte’s intent was “yay, intersectionality,” of course. The phrasing just struck me as leading that direction.)
@Sastra #4
I think they just switch between the two at will to avoid having to argue their cases. If you argue against their ideas, they say “But think of the people”; if you ask them for concrete examples of people being harmed, they will start to talk about abstract things.
It is exactly the same way some religious people switch effortlessly between the inexplicable and ineffable God whenever you point out inconsistencies, and the ‘loving helpful, just pray for it’ God to bait people into their belief.
Nullius #1
There is, of course, always a tradeoff between being short and being accurate. I think the motivation part was “sort of” implied by the word “attempting”, though. E.g. we’re all familiar with the argument that TIMs in men’s prisons are at increased risk of rape and violence and those of us who oppose putting them in women’s prisons are indeed making them less safe. So that would be an example of an unintended side-effect while the intended goal is safeguarding women. On the other hand the knee-jerk hostility of TRAs to the very idea of separate jails for TIMs gives the lie to the claim that their main concern is for the safety of these TIMs. It is all about abolishing female only spaces in general for the sake of “validating” TIMs in general. And for at least some of these TIMs I think it’s obviously about getting easy access to helpless victims (as witnessed by the fact that rapes have already occurred).
Sastra #4
My #1 was inspired by the following quote from Maryam Namazie:
Namazie was, of course, talking about the taboo against criticizing religious ideas in particular, but I think the same applies to, say, the idea that “gender” is even a thing, that being a “man” or “woman” is about gender rather than sex, that a man is a woman if he says he is etc. So my point was not that BSJMs care too much about intellectual rigor (!), but that any criticism of the overvalued idea is dismissed in advance as hateful and bigoted in itself, no matter how justified the criticism and no matter how nebulous, harmful, or wrong the idea.
@ Bjarte;
I’m struggling to understand the connection between Namazie’s point here and “ideas are more important than people.” The “all- views-are-equally-valid” pop postmodernist perspective blurs the distinction between beliefs and individuals in favor of the individual. Criticizing Islam is therefore the same as spitting in the face of a Muslim. You’re telling them they’re not important enough to know what is true for them. Disputing racially-motivated police brutality statistics is racism against black people. Same with arguing against the existence of an innate gender identity. The debate over the truth or falsehood of the concept is outweighed by the fact that trans people need validation, are being killed, etc. Erase the belief, erase the believer.
Sastra: It’s a tangled question. Does a taboo against criticizing belief prioritize the belief, or does it prioritize protecting the believer from angst? The former is obvious, and you nicely demonstrate that a compelling case can be made for the latter. So, um, let’s just say it does both?
—
Bjarte: Yeah, I figured you were probably gesturing toward motive, but somehow revised away the part where I, actually, you know, said that.
Bjarte, one thing about the safety in the prisons thing. Even if they are not trans, apparently rapists and child abusers get more mistreatment in prison to begin with. All the male prisoners are at risk of violence from fellow inmates and guards; has there been any study done to suggest that trans women are more at risk? I can see how they would be, but without hard data, I tend to recoil at “I can see how they would be”. Right now, I’m at work, and supposed to be working, so googling it seems like wasting my boss’s time (I don’t know why posting here doesn’t feel that way, but that’s the way it is!)
The main data, for me, would be a comparison of violence against trans identified males compared with violence against rapists and child molesters. And with a control group of the prison population as a whole.
I suspect some of the driving force of identify as women to get into women’s prison is in fact a safety issue, but it probably isn’t about being trans and being more subject to violence, but against the general atmosphere of violence that is heightened against perpetrators of certain types of crimes.
And gay/effeminate men, older men, physically smaller/weaker men.
Nobody should be raped or subjected to violence in prison, but once again we’re all supposed to feel protective of this one particular subpopulation.
Sastra #8
I thought the connection was pretty straightforward. She refers to “cultures and beliefs” (i.e. ideas in the wider sense of the word) taking on “personas of their own”. As I interpret the quote, she also seems to talk about (the applicability of) “concepts such as rights, equality, respect and tolerance” being shifted from “the individual” (i.e. people) to “culture and religion”. She even talks about such ideas taking “precedence over real live human beings”. The final sentence beginning with “This is why” seems to suggest that the part about “criticism and ridiculing of or opposition to beliefs, cultures, religions, gods and prophets” being “deemed racism, disrespecting, inciting hatred and even violence against those deemed believers” is in itself a consequence of rather than the justification for the perceived illegitimacy of criticizing the overvalued idea.
Anyway nothing in my post hinges on what Namazie actually meant to say. My point was inspired by her quote as I interpreted it, rightly or not, and whether or not it’s what Namazie meant to say, it is what I meant to say. I still think it’s a common feature of BSJMs to treat “ideas, behaviors, belief systems, ideologies, cultures, traditions, policies, or ways of life” as inherently deserving of “rights, equality, respect and tolerance” regardless of merit. Real SJMs tend to be the ones arguing that idea must be judged on their merits (truth, usefulness, fairness etc.), while BSJMs dismiss any criticism of the overvalued idea as inherently bigoted, hateful, and wrong in principle, again no matter how justified the criticism, and no matter how unjustified, harmful, or wrong the idea.