I used to be a social justice warrior. There, I said it. When I say that, people are oftentimes confused as to what that means, perhaps because it’s a term used mostly in political circles. A quick Googling later, you will discover a social justice warrior (SJW for short) is someone who promotes socially progressive views, including feminism, civil rights, multiculturalism, inclusiveness, identity politics, and globalism. They are usually found on social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and especially Tumblr. You might even meet one in real life (my condolences). Right-wingers tend to use the term as a pejorative, while many of those on the left wear it with pride. For me, it has become a phrase that creates ambivalent emotions. Entering “social justice warrior” into the Youtube search bar reveals groups of young adults who do nothing but protest, scream “racist”, and act in infantile ways in the face of dissenting opinions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying every social justice warrior acts this way. There are decent people who push their cause with respect and decency. Unfortunately, I was one of the others who didn’t.

During my junior year of high school, I came across numerous videos and articles made by social justice warriors on the Internet. They talked about identity, third-wave feminism, the concept of oppressors and oppressed, police brutality, political correctness, privilege and power, racism, and a slew of other social topics. I took in what they said, and internalized their ideology over the course of a couple months. Once you accept one tenet of social justice, the rest follows in turn. For most of my life, I’ve been a staunch liberal. Since many of their opinions were similar to those expressed by myself and the bulk of the political left, it seemed natural that I bought into their ideas. The main theme throughout every piece of media that stuck out to me was that people were suffering and I had little idea it was going on. I consider myself a caring person, so I needed to find out more about the plight of other people. While I had previous second-hand knowledge of existing -isms, I didn’t realize the apparent extent to which they existed. I’m a cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, upper middle class, White American male. According to social justice theory, I’m one of the most privileged people on earth and a member of an oppressor class. I felt guilty because I was implicated in others’ oppression. Naturally, I wanted to do my part to help end discrimination, no matter what that entailed. Also, I wanted to become a better person and rid myself of what social justice warriors call “unconscious” or “implicit bias”. Besides overt bias that shows up in discriminatory practices, people tend to hold biases that they’re unaware of about any group that is perceived as an “other”. When we encounter these “others”, we make assumptions about someone based on characteristics such as race, social class, sexual orientation, and disability. Anti-racist activist, Tim Wise phrased my thought process perfectly when he said, “I don’t have a doubt that people of color will liberate themselves from white supremacy, but the real question is, will white people do the same?” I applied this logic to women and men, LGBTQ people and straight people, transgender people, and cisgender people, and so on. I wanted to save myself from unconscious behavior that negatively impacted my perception of others. It's an idea that I consider, and I still have some biases that I need to sort out. I saw myself as a flawed individual and found a method with which I could improve.

For two years, I was a devout social justice warrior.  There are well-defined issues with the movement, which revealed themselves occasionally, but I ignored them as hate from those who disagreed with it. Most of my interactions took place online. I shared social justice articles, followed social justice pages, and engaged with those I perceived to be as enemies of social progress. This meant anyone who disagreed with social justice whatsoever. I remember numerous times where I called people “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe”, “bigot”, and other slanderous terms when they, in retrospect, actually weren’t. I remember having an online discussion with a black conservative about police brutality. When he commented, “Us black people need to stop blaming racism and focus on ourselves. Our crime rates and drug use rates are high compared to the rest of the population, and don’t get me started on the welfare state and illegitimacy rates in the black community,” I responded with, “Racism is the problem, not the black community. Go do some more research, you Uncle Tom.” There I was, lashing out against a member of a group and not realizing the problem with the situation. Social justice emphasizes collectives rather than individuals, and as such groups, people together based on superficial characteristics. Despite the diversity of its members, the movement’s beliefs are extremely homogenous. Therefore all members of an “oppressed” group must hold beliefs that correlate with those of social justice. If someone doesn’t, its members harass that person. Oftentimes, other join in, acting out a feeding frenzy of self-righteousness. This is what happened in that cyber battle. Several other SJW’s attacked him with phrases such as “internalized racism” and “sellout”. Although his statement was controversial, he didn’t deserve the hate he received from us. We reacted to him that why because he dared to have an opinion that black people aren’t “supposed” to have (I know, horrible, right?). I didn’t know it at the time, but I was acting out the will of the group to the expense of my individuality.

I suffered intellectually as well. My sources for online news dwindled to CNN, Everyday Feminism, the Huffington Post, and The Young Turks. My critical thinking and debate skills suffered from insulating myself from constructive dialogue and different ideas. Furthermore, I developed a cynical view of the world. I believed that injustice was everywhere, and I couldn’t do anything about it but complain and whine. I refused to listen to anyone who didn’t subscribe to the values of social justice, such as parents, friends, and teachers. It was especially a source of conflict between my mother and I. Although she's quite liberal herself, I was even further left than she was. One day, we argued about whether gender was a social construct or biological in nature. 

"Gender shouldn't be a thing, all it does is divide people based on a social construct," I declared.

"What are you talking about? It's not just a social construct. Look at countless animal species, and you'll find the difference between males and females. You have to notice gender roles in animals like lions, where the females hunt and the males father cubs. Humans have gender roles as well, but we don't have to apply them across the board. Humans have the ability to look past primitive impulses, but acting like those impulses don't exist is f***ing ridiculous," she countered.

"Shut up Mom! Check your privilege!" I shouted.

She told me to leave her alone for the rest of the night. The next morning, after a sincere apology, we hugged and made up. It's sad to say that I'm not fabricating this conversation, or that this wasn't an isolated incident.  Looking back on them, I now feel awful. If I treated my own mother that way, how would I  have continued to treat complete strangers or acquaintances who said something I didn’t like? Chances were, not very well. I contemplated how I was conducting myself, and what I saw was unsettling. This was a time when I was supposed to be becoming a mature, emotionally-developed individual. I saw the exact opposite happening, and I wasn’t progressing from a state of perpetual adolescence. This would have had dire consequences for my future by negatively impacting how I perceived reality and formed healthy relationships with other people. Instead of being a better person like originally intended, I would be worse off than when I started. Thinking about scenes like these was the beginning of the end of my time as a social justice warrior. I began to see the dark side of its ideology, and I didn’t like the spiteful person I was. The spell of social justice was breaking, but it took something more abstract to finally shatter it.

My most prominent grievance with social justice is the debate over freedom of speech, which shouldn’t even be subject to debate in the first place. The First Amendment to the Constitution states:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Social justice warriors tend to believe that since the First Amendment only says the government can’t regulate speech, they are entitled to do so. Many believe speech that can be interpreted as hateful to women or religious and ethnic minorities shouldn’t be allowed. For a while, I wondered why they believed this, and suddenly it hit me. It comes from good intentions, a desire to support those who they believe are oppressed. Unfortunately, this means in practice that they want to censor anything they deem “offensive” or anything they disagree with politically. Books have been banned from schools because they mentioned terms that were offensive to a certain group, such The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn containing the "n-word". Comedians and guest speakers were uninvited to college campuses by the student bodies because didn’t like what they had to say about various topics. Speech codes, which ban certain words from use, have been implemented on college campuses. Columbia, Harvard, the University of Texas at Austin, Princeton, and even the University of Michigan are some of the many colleges and universities who either have or had speech codes in place. Places of higher education should be centers of debate and free expression rather than the exact opposite. In a free society such as ours, people should be allowed to engage with one another and not be worried about censorship or someone with delicate sensibilities shaming them for expressing their opinions. My admiration of social justice turned into annoyance. I realized that I valued free thought and expression over getting good feelings from participating in the movement. Unless I benefit people’s lives directly, such as donating money to send young girls to school in another country or tutor children from disadvantaged communities, all I'm doing is complaining about inequality and nothing improves. Social justice is such a fragile world view, if you drop one main idea, the rest falls apart. One by one, my acquired opinions disappeared until I could no longer agree with the majority of their positions.  If you want to know what any of those are, all you have to do is to search the Internet. After all, their media merely repeats the same things at a mind-numbing rate.

One incident in particular at the University of Michigan reinforced my concern over free speech. On September 27, 2016, the Michigan Political Union scheduled a debate to answer the question: “Is the Black Lives Matter movement harmful to race relations in the United States?” The MPU structured the debate to allow a pro and con group to answer “Yes” or “No”.  I initially wanted to attend, but I  decided not to that same night due to having too much homework. The next morning, I found an article on MLive with the headline: Black Lives Matter protesters take over BLM debate hosted at U-M. The eyebrow-raising article detailed how hundreds converged on the Michigan League where the debate was held and staged a sit-in, shutting it down.  "Black lives are not up for debate," they shouted on a video recorded from inside the event. They questioned what authority the MPU had to discuss the issue because none of the panel members were black. When I read that, I thought, even though they aren't black what gives you the right to shut down a debate? While I support Black Lives Matter and standing up to police brutality, I'm strongly against stopping dialogues like this. The protesters misinterpreted the purpose of the debate, which was not to debate whether black lives mattered or not; no one’s life is up for debate. Rather, as I stated, it was about whether or not the movement has hurt race relations. The right of the MPU to hold the debate supersedes the feelings of anyone who disagrees with its premise. It's inevitable that people are going to say things that you don't like. You can either ignore it and move on or counter it with a discourse of your own. Censoring others just because you disagree with what they say is contradictory to who we are as a free society.

There is a debate on the left concerning the use of the labels “liberal” and “progressive”. Leftists tend to use these terms interchangeably when describing themselves. This makes sense in the United States since the Democratic Party is the sole major leftist political party, with both groups coexisting inside of it. Both liberals and progressives share the core tenets of modern American leftism: civil liberties, equality, and a mixed economy with a combination of government involvement and free market principles. While it’s important to avoid generalizing Democrats’ political positions, liberals and progressives believe in leftist points of view, including but not limited to: more gun control, reproductive rights for women, civil rights, greater economic regulation, a progressive tax rate, support for gay marriage, and the separation of church and state.  For me, the point of divergence between “liberals” and “progressives” is their attitude to opposing beliefs. The Oxford Dictionary defines a “liberal” as someone who is “willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas” and “favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms”. From personal experience, liberals tend to be more open-minded and tolerant of other opinions and more willing to engage in constructive conversation, while progressives are sorely lacking in both areas. I find this especially true in regards to free speech. In this way, social justice warriors are a fundamental core of the progressive movement and overlap leftist principles with their own. By not respecting other ideas, they are illiberal by definition. An internet meme I found summarizes the difference:

Classical liberalism: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Progressivism: I disapprove of what you say, and I will publicly shame you, lobby to have you censored and demand you be fired for your job.

Upon deeper reflection, I was terrified to discover my feelings mirror the latter more than the former. Rather than being a compassionate person helping those who needed it, I was angry and hateful. I now realize that social justice movement is a toxic one full of bitterness and intolerance, where dissent of any kind is not tolerated. When I finally broke free from their controlling collective, I felt freer. It was a primal sense of freedom, I was once again able to express my own opinions without fear of any sort of reprisal. It was an amazing feeling, one I wish everyone was able to feel. Despite my tumultuous political journey, I would be lying if I said if I was no longer a leftist. I still retain mainly left-leaning views, but without the negativity of social justice. Today, I only refer to myself as “liberal”, and refuse to adopt the “progressive” label to not associate myself with SJW’s.