Types of Social
Justice Warriors
Once upon a time there was a staff meeting of a student government
association at a major university in North America for an
all-important rally to show the university administration what the
student body really wanted. This was the first such meeting for this
body, and having just come into office on the waves of an impressive
5% voter turnout, they knew that they had the pulse of what the
students at their large university of 30,000 students wanted because
of the votes of the 1500 who bothered to show up. Or, so they
thought, because each member of the executive board had a different
agenda.
This play will attempt to demonstrate the different archetypes of the
Social Justice Warrior that I've encountered in my nearly decade-long
exposure to campus activism. I'm sure that there are more than what
I'm listing. If you think of more put them in the comments and I'll
do a follow up to this silliness in the near future. For now it is
sufficient to list the three types: the Identity Warrior, the
Politico, and the Jobber. Each has a different part they play and
different concerns they bring to the job – and I say 'job' because
officers at a surprisingly high amount of these schools
get paid tobe professional activists .
A unifying feature of each of the three types is a belief that
student governments matter when, other than their legal duty to
distribute the student fee, they don't. Of the three types, however,
the Jobber believes this the least.
Courtesy of Panther Online. SGAs spend a lot of money on some silly things.
Returning to our play.....the Student Body President, a three-year
veteran of the SGA who got their start as an intern for a
long-departed president, and herself a Politico with ambitions of
being a US Senator some day, calls the meeting to order. Her
Vice-President, a student with deep ties to student athletes and the
fraternities, and himself a very successful Jobber, calls pound his
hands on the table to get the team to shut up so the meeting can
commence. They have very important things to plan.
The Politico
is someone who seeks to work in real politics in the future. They
aren't limited to working in Student Governments. There are variants
of this found in student media, student organizations, and
non-profits including political parties. They want to turn the time
they invested in The Cause into something bigger: work as a
legislative aide in the state legislature in the next few years,
followed by work for the state party and potentially public office
after that. It is often overlooked that Student Body Presidents have
several doors opened for them in the future because of how well that
position is seen by future employers, including politicians and
professional activists. Political science and economics majors
abound.
The
Student Body President begins with following basic Roberts Rules of
Order to ensure that the meeting is efficiently run. The
organization's Multicultural Affairs Director (yes, they exist),
herself an Identity Warrior, asks that an item be added to the agenda
to discuss the needs of the Black Student Union. Everyone agrees,
with the Vice President seconding the motion. She will be given 5
minutes to speak, with discussion limited to 10 minutes thereafter.
The Jobber is
there because they needed a job and wanted to do something they
thought would help make the university community a better place to
live and study. This is where I fell on this spectrum, whether it was
when I worked in student government, on the campus media, or in
university housing as a Resident Assistant. Driven by both financial
need and a desire to serve (and avoid making coffee/sandwiches for a
living), Jobbers are often concerned with efficiency and getting the
job done, whatever that may be. Jobbers frequently make up the ranks
of the overlooked positions, which often have the most real-world
skills, including media relations, Chief of Staff, and the positions
most involved in keeping the office functioning. Often the education
they have or are pursuing runs the gamut because, again, they just
want to a job that matters.
Logic not required to be a far left professional activist.
The
staff member who focuses on the work for the Women's Resource Center,
the LGBTQ Resource Center, and childcare facilities on campus speaks
up and reminds everyone to use proper pronouns and not assume
anyone's identity. This person is obviously a devoted Identity
Warrior and budding professional intersectional feminist who never
fails to remind people that the Patriarchy is everywhere and keeping
tabs on what they do. Most people nod in agreement, though a few
remain silent so as to not offend anyone (or get fired). Everyone
goes around the table, introducing themselves and their preferred
pronouns...and, as usual the pronouns fit the outward expectation.
But, on to business.
The Identity
Warrior is the most notorious
of the Social Justice Warriors. These are the people who
claimviolent video games promote rape,
claim that a rape culture exists in the West despite a total lack of
evidence, or declare that
literally everything is sexist andproblematic. Most often, this group have
a background in sociology or any of its most extremist offshoots,
including gender studies or critical race theory or some combination
thereof. These are the truest of true believers and aim to have a
life of professional activism. When critics talk about cultural
Marxists, look no further than these special snowflakes who seem
immune to the facts of history that show Marxism to be a horrific
ideology with an enormous body count of mostly poor people in Asia
and Eastern Europe.
Everything is problematic. Everything. Including the author of this blog.
The
meeting goes as expected. A meeting of the Student Senate is
assembled, directions for developing committee rules and deadlines
are set, and the next meeting is scheduled. The bulk of the time is
used 'debating' the needs presented by the resident Identity Warriors
on staff, despite no dissenting voices speaking out and everyone
agreeing. The meeting lasts 2 hours, of which an hour and a half was
spent preaching to the choir. Each member of the executive team will
go to their subordinates to work on the issues raised by the Identity
Warriors. The President will quietly work on the directives given to
her by the 'nonpartisan' statewide student association, mostly
registering voters.
There
are several places that Social Justice Warriors come from in
universities. Student Government Associations are the most potent,
though housing programs and campus media are also important pipelines
for leadership. A recurring factor for these types is that often
their leadership positions require so much time spent on activism
that grades suffer. In this they are professional student activists
first, and students second. A common refrain when things in the
movement are going well is 'I wish I could do this without being a
student,' with the absurdity of that statement being lost on most
involved.
I
may make this story recurring. Our budding student leaders have
important things to work on, including the passing of a student
budget and fighting the all-knowing Patriarchy on campus, despite the
majority of college students being women. But I digress, because the
legally mandated work student governments do typically gets done by
far more moderate students: those that make up the incidental fee
committees of universities. I wouldn't even characterize them
collectively as SJWs due ot their frequently being isolated from the
madhouse that is the Senate and Executive branches of SGAs. Unlike
the rest of our student leadership team, who are too busy protesting
a 'militarized' campus security force and excrement-based
race-baiting graffiti, the fee committee members have actual work to
do.
