Classic Episode: Social Justice Warriors

Can social media change the world? So-called social justice warriors, slactivists and hashtag activists think so. In this episode, Cristen and Caroline dissect social media activism and its backlash and ponder the perils of political correctness.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how stup
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and it is Social Justice Week
on stuff Mom Never Told You, And we're gonna take
social justice in a couple of possibly unexpected directions. And

(00:26):
today we're going to focus on this thing, this person,
this pejorative, the social justice warrior, and what it is,
where the term comes from, and what its use and
existence says more about social justice in the digital age. Yeah,

(00:49):
here's a tip as to how what an old I am. Um.
I had no idea. I had no idea. I am
familiar with an activist where they're online or you know,
on the streets. I am familiar with people online who
sort of police the language and imagery that other people

(01:10):
use for good or for bad um, you know. And
I'm familiar with the idea of like the internet fla activists,
somebody who just sits online, clicking like all day and
doesn't actually take part in any you know, larger social movement.
I'm familiar with all these things. I had no idea
that this larger argument about a social justice warrior online

(01:34):
being a negative thing was a thing well, and it's
good for you to know now, Caroline, because some people
might consider you and I and our work with stuff
I've never told you as social justice warriors, because we
talked regularly about things like feminism, privilege, intersectionality, and other
so called politically correct topics that some think are really

(01:56):
taking all of the fun out of the world. And
I first came across this term and was curious about
it and wanted to have an excuse to learn more
about it, hence podcast topic I Know, I Love our Lives.
I first ran across it during the dreaded gamer Gate
kurt fuffle online, which I'm not going to take the

(02:16):
time to go into listeners. If you haven't heard about it,
google it. There is more information than you could ever want.
And so, but this was a particular pejorative that was
tossed about a lot during gamer Gate, particularly to label
their arch social justice warrior, Anita Sarkasian of feminist frequency

(02:41):
and very quickly, for those of you not familiar with
who Anita Sarkasian is, we've cited her feminist frequency videos
a lot on the podcast. A few years ago, her
Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a video series looking
at video games through a feminist lens, attracted a lot
of negative to engine from certain gamers who were not

(03:03):
very happy with the idea of her doing this, of
video games changing, etcetera, etcetera. And fast forward and I'm
covering over a glossing over a lot of details. I
realized we have gamer Gate and this whole battle on
the internet, and I would say offline as well, between
the supposed social justice warrior figure and people who are

(03:27):
kind of grinding their teeth at what the Internet has
done to social justice as an idea. So first, let's
start with what social justice. No warrior, just social justice
is because it's a really basic concept. Yeah. Um. So

(03:47):
it's defined by John T. Jost and Aaron C. K
in social justice history, Theory and Research, and they lay
it out by saying that social justice is a state
of affairs in which a the benefits and burdens in
society are dispersed in accordance with some allocation principle or
set of principles, be procedures, norms, and rules that govern

(04:12):
political and other forms of decision making, preserve the basic rights, liberties,
and entitlements of individuals and groups. And see human beings
are treated with dignity and respect not only by authorities,
but also by other relevant social actors, including fellow citizens.
And so really, it kind of social justice goes above

(04:33):
and beyond just saying, hey, you know, women and men
should have equal opportunities, or you know, black people should
have the same opportunities as white people. Um, it's it's
deeper than that and bigger than that, in that you
should have every opportunity to live the same kind of
life with the same kind of liberty and other basic
human rights, not just American civil rights as everyone else. Yeah,

(04:56):
And it's really investigating systems and in stitutions and how
those kinds of systems that are in place can often
breed inequality in myriad ways. And the concept of justice
has been a foundation of Western society. And in the
eighteen forties, Jesuit philosopher Luigi Taprelli coined social justice and

(05:20):
associated it with the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, and
so for a long time it was largely a religious
term and was actually integrated into Catholic doctrine, for instance,
But then in nineteen seventy one, John Rawls is a
theory of justice kind of brought social justice into the

(05:41):
secular mainstream of academia, or the academic mainstream. I could
also say in another way, Yeah, basically it revolves around
the idea that every person has equal rights to the
most extensive basic liberty. And it really revolves around, uh
he calls a realistically utopian social contract basically that we

(06:05):
should follow certain rules for the betterment of everyone. That
it's about the protection of equal access to liberties, rights
and opportunities. In addition, and this is key also to
taking care of the least advantaged members of society, those
who lack those primary goods, not fancy pants for instance,

(06:25):
as like products goods, we mean those primary goods that
ensure that people are free and equal and able to
live a complete life. And the Internet and social media
more specifically have been incredibly powerful tools for the advancement
of social justice today. Now, critics would say that, oh,

(06:47):
all your hashtags and Tumblr reblogs amount to nothing in
the day to day, But as we're going to talk
about in more detail in the second half of the podcast,
there are some very real world impacts of digital social
justice activism, and Jeane Denby, writing over at Politico, has

(07:09):
pointed out how social justice today in the digital age,
notably isn't so much organized anymore around a central, historically
male leader like a Martin Luther King, for instance, And
Denbi writes quote, the younger activists are instead inclined to
what Jackson called the Fannie Lou Hamer Ella Baker model,

(07:29):
an approach that embraces grassroots and in which agency is
widely diffused. So we're kind of, I mean, we're sort
of owning this on a more individual level, right. And
of course Fanniel Hammer and Ella Baker were very famous
civil rights activists, and Ellen Baker very famously kind of
threw up her hands with the whole cult of personality
around Martin Luther King and said, listen, this is not

(07:50):
what I signed up for. This is not what this
movement should be. And one of the examples that's given
in this political story that I had remembered from news
coverage months ago is the example of Ferguson Missouri protesters
essentially telling Al Sharpton to sit down and shut up,
saying we don't need you being the old man leading
the movement. We are young people, we have a voice.

(08:12):
We can be activists and protest for our rights just
as well as as you can. And a lot of
those very literal feet on the street were initially organized
largely through things like Twitter. And again, we're going to
talk about this in more detail, and I don't want
to get ahead of myself, so let's now talk about

(08:32):
what the social justice warrior is, because to me, this
is just a really fascinating example of where we are
with this whole thing. Because according to the the esteemed
resource Urban dictionary dot com as well as the most
excellent resource and I'm not being sarcastic, no, your meme,

(08:54):
a social justice warrior is quote a pejorative term for
an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on
social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow or
not well thought out way, for the purpose of raising
their own personal reputation. And they thrive on sites historically

(09:16):
like live journal and today very much so on Tumbler,
which is part of why personally I love Tumbler. I
love just it's it's earnestness, which can absolutely go awry,
as we will discuss. But friends, listeners, countrymen, if you
want to see some examples of this social justice warrior

(09:39):
ething in quotes sending over to Tumbler, spend some time,
go to the go to stuff I've never told you
dot tumbler dot com. You'll you'll find your way. Yeah. Um.
And I mean an example of this would be someone
in this stereotype of the social justice where you're being
a negative. Um. This is someone who maybe isn't super
hyper well educated, did on a topic, a social topic,

(10:02):
but takes up the mantle, takes up the pitchfork and
uh the torch, and leads this fight for you know
what they perceived to be the betterment of society, but
maybe not with the deep understanding of a topic that
they should have well. And it's the assumption too that
they exist only online. They're kind of the ultimate SLA

(10:24):
activists because not only are they perceived to just be
clicking their way to fighting for social justice and not
actually doing anything, they are also assumed to be even
worse informed. Kind of but again this is also I mean,
this is meant to be an insult, So the whole

(10:45):
thing is just soaked in snark and and part of
that negative stereotype about them being online SLA activists is
that not only are they not well informed. According to
the stereotype, but that they also pass on unreliable information,
sort of preaching at strangers on the internet. Yeah. So,
One rather colorful example of this behavior from Urban Dictionary

(11:09):
is that quote a social justice warrior reads an essay
about a form of internal misogyny where women and girls
insult stereotypical feminine activities and characteristics in order to boost
themselves over other women. The social justice warrior absorbs this
and later complaints in response to a Huffington's Post article
about a ten year old feminist letter because the ten

(11:31):
year old called the color pink prissy. So and I
mean that that I think ultimately, at least in that example,
it gets to this, Uh, this bothersome level of what
some would think of as just nitpicking, pointless nitpicking, and
in terms in terms of timeline. Uh. It really cropped

(11:54):
up or seemed to crop up in the mid two
thousand's among the activists live journal community members um, but
it also popped up in a lot of online fan communities.
For example, there was concern voiced about able is um,
which was reflected in uh the My Little Pony character
dirty hoofs. And in addition to that, the phrase check

(12:15):
your privilege, for instance, is very triggering for a lot
of non social justice warrior types. I mean it's it's
all of these kinds of check your privilege. Also is
a phrase associated commonly with the social justice warrior type
that also ruffles a lot of people's feathers, to the
point that there are now social justice warrior troll blogs

(12:39):
and run the mill trolls who have emerged because the Internet.
But now let's introduce the social justice warriors media friendlier
and slightly less pejorative cousin SLA activism. Yeah so. According
to the Oxford Dictionary, SLA activism is actions performed view

(13:01):
the Internet in support of a political or social cause,
but regarded as requiring little time or involvement, for example,
signing an online petition or joining a campaign group on
a social media website. There's also examples where like, you know,
a natural disaster strikes and you can text something to
the Red Cross and it automatically donates or whatever. It's like, Oh,

(13:22):
the stereotype being or the assumption being like, oh good,
you didn't even bother to read anything or learn anything
or actually go help anyone. You just texted someone. Now,
the Oxford English Dictionary definition mentions a social media website,
and we've already mentioned Tumbler because slack activism and Tumbler
go together like peanut butter and jelly. Really, and there

(13:44):
have been articles about this about Tumbler and it's it's
purpose now in a lot of ways as being this
platform for online social justice. Their trend pieces at the
New York Times and Forbes magazine that we read in Tumbler,
just in case you didn't know, is massive. I mean,
they're over two million blogs. It's one of the thirty

(14:07):
most visited sites online. People spend twenty four billion minutes
per month on it, which isn't terribly surprising. Um, I
spend too many minutes per months. It's great. I have
to make myself stop. I mean the gifts, Caroline, they
have all the gifts, so many gifts. Well, and we
might love it too because it's really a millennial hub. Great.

(14:30):
I mean it's made by and for millennials, because of
users are between fifteen and thirty four years old. And importantly,
sixty four percent of Tumbler users say they care about
social causes and look into them on Tumbler. And this
detail was really funny to me um, I think it was.
In the New York Times article, they noted that the

(14:55):
Romney gaff about binders full of women was apparently a
tipping point for tumbler activism because there were Tumbler set
up and all of the gifts shared and all sorts
of hilarious related memes created and shared on Tumbler. And
I mean, I think that's great when you look at
it from that perspective, as far as like, we are
not going to let these idiot politicians of whatever party

(15:18):
get away with sayings stupid stuff. And yes, do things
go overboard frequently, pretty much every every one of those
twenty four billion minutes, someone is going overboard with something.
But I mean, I like that idea that you're not
letting people get away with the stupid typical politician stuff. Well,
and people take it very seriously. Speaking to The New

(15:40):
York Times, Philip Howard, who is the principal investigator at
the Digital Activism Research Project at the University of Washington,
said quote, Tumbler is kind of like a gateway drug
for activism. Once you connect to other people who feel
strongly about race or crime or gay marriage, you stay
engaged on that one issue area, and similarly, Tila Wolfe,

(16:03):
writing over at the Huffington's Post, praises Tumbler and even
the loath social justice warrior type for accountability. Yeah, not
only accountability, but also incorporating intersectionality. She says that it's
not rare to see a lesbian blog take on racial
justice in one post and dating advice and another. They

(16:24):
celebrate each other often, and they defend each other in
a way that almost no other platform can do by
policing trolls when they infiltrate the bubble. And what kind
of groups and communities are these millennial digital activists advocating for.
I mean, they're really focused on social justice and discrimination

(16:44):
of all stripes, racial equality, police brutality, immigration reforms, the
school to prison pipeline, lgbt Q rights, education, inequality, and
of course feminism. Feminism, so much feminism, so many amy
polar gifts love it. Um. But you know, this online
activism also comes with a backlash, and the backlash itself

(17:07):
can sometimes be more virulent from social justice warriors themselves.
We've experienced this before. I mean, once you dip your
toe into this kind of online activism or simply talking
about things like feminism, equality, racial injustice, etcetera. You do
open yourself up to being called out for not doing

(17:31):
it correctly right exactly the whole idea of the bad
feminist in our case for instance, about you know, okay, well,
you have adopted the title of feminist and the identity
of feminists, and so we are holding you to that,
and I mean as well as you should. However, what
comes along with that, whether it's feminism or or crime

(17:52):
and prison reform or whatever. Um, you know, people are
people and they're imperfect, and so sometimes they're can be
a huge, uh, to use your word, kerfuffle, which I
also love, There can be a huge kerfuffle if somebody
miss steps, yeah, and it can be really challenging to

(18:13):
recover from that too. So for instance, Lacey Green, who
is a sex vlogger. She has a fantastic channel on
YouTube called sex Plus. She also hosts MTVS Brawler Show
on YouTube. She is an out and out feminist. She's
sex positive, as the name of her channel implies, and

(18:35):
she's been around for a while and a few years
ago she came under massive fire from people who would
be assumed to be in her corner for the use
of her use of tranny in a video, and it
was a video that she had done a while ago.
And she also offered a very sincere apology saying, look,

(18:56):
I was young, I didn't know. I'm sorry, I will
you know I would never use this term knowing um,
the kind of damage that it can cause. And an
apology wasn't enough. I mean, there were national stories about
tumbler users sending her death threats, of doxing her, which
is the practice of publicly posting someone's whereabouts where they live.

(19:20):
She had to move apartments because she was legitimately afraid
for her safety. Yeah, and I mean RuPaul's drag Race
of all things, has faced similar pressure. There was this
online outcry over a competition on the show that was
called female or She Mail. And I mean, here's the thing, um,

(19:42):
the reactions aren't wrong. I mean, you know, we we
should combat harmful, negative, hurtful language about whatever group of
people you know fill in the blank here. We should
combat negative, awful language. But on the other hand, a
lot of these social justice were ears online are getting
a negative reputation because what are you doing sending someone

(20:04):
death threats? Right? It's it's this question of the level
of the mistake, the error, versus the level of response
and the social justice warrior insult exists because a lot
of times that level of response, sometimes rightfully, but sometimes
not so rightfully, as in the case in my opinion

(20:26):
with the Lacey Green incident, is far greater and far
more punitive than it should be because a lot of
times these this group of people might end up using
hateful language toward another person to combat hateful language that
doesn't seem right. Yeah, it's it's it's funny, not funny, funny,

(20:48):
ha ha type of funny. But it is interesting that
the same culture of anonymity that allows you know, terrible, hateful, racist,
homophobic people to flourish on line also allows um, with
the click of a mouse, one of these otherwise well
intentioned so called social justice warriors to say hateful, awful

(21:11):
things to other people. Yeah, and that's not to say
that people shouldn't get angry these kinds of things happening,
but there is maybe at the danger with the Internet
and social media is just how easy it is to
immediately unleashed. And I will say, in our experience with
stuff I've never told you. We've been doing this for
a long time, and we appreciate being corrected when we

(21:35):
say the wrong thing. If we make an unintentionally offensive statement,
we want to know. And the way to let us
know is not by telling us we're the worst people
in the world, but rather just by saying, hey, by
the way, I notice that you're saying this. Links are

(21:55):
also helpful. Here are resources, here's you know, this might
be a better way of phrase seeing this. For instance,
a long time ago. Now, we use the term transgendered
on the podcast, and that's not an okay term to use.
It's transgender, not transgendered, which can be stigmatizing. And someone
wrote in so helpfully and gently saying, hey, by the way,

(22:17):
I can tell you've got a really good intent here,
but the delivery a bit off. If you could use
this word and not this word, and this is the
reason why, and it was fantastic, you know, and going
forward transgender done z. Yeah. Well, I think the key
there for whoever it is making the misstep and whoever
it is offering the correction. I mean, the key there
is to just remember the humanity of of everyone, and

(22:41):
that it's good that you're fighting for the humanity of
one group, but you should remember that there is the
humanity of all to take into consideration. Um. And and
we're not just saying that because we love kind letters. Um.
It is just a helpful reminder about you know, playing
on the internet in general. Yeah, I mean, it's just
a whole constructive criticism thing. And yes to I'm going

(23:02):
to make Caroline's point again, Remember the humanity behind the
avatars and voices and faces that you see here interact
with on the Internet. That's just a good, a good
human rule of thumb. But pulling back even from Tumbler
and broadening this, some people like Jonathan Shaite famously or

(23:25):
infamously depending on your interpretation of the article at New
York Magazine, argue that all of this, this whole social
justice warrior thing perhaps are hyper focused on feminism, if
such a thing could exist, is really just a symptom
of what Schait describes as a return of the quote
unquote PC or politically correct culture that is replacing reason

(23:50):
with sensoriousness and tone policing and shit. Argued in a
rather controversial New York Magazine Peace that all of our
focus on language and equality and social justice in general
is having a chilling effect for communication, that our standards

(24:10):
are almost too high at this point and nothing is
fun anymore. Yeah, well yeah, and and not that people
shouldn't have fun or whatever be allowed to make jokes.
But you know, he cites women feminists who, you know,
it's not just that they're offering lip service, that they
are actually active in the feminist community, women who are saying,

(24:31):
you know, like I'm I'm afraid to say anything because
everything that comes out of my mouth is misconstrued or
is not doing feminism right. Um, and it's exhausting and
um So, my my personal take on it is that
political correctness is vital to UH learning to accept people

(24:54):
who are different from ourselves. We need things like political
correctness to a degree because you know, otherwise children will
never grow up learning that other people different from themselves
are okay, that it's okay to like and appreciate and
respect people who are different from you. Um. And you know,
you need to learn that it's not okay to joke
about certain things, that your language can have a big
effect and be hurtful. That being said, I think that

(25:18):
it can go too far sometimes in terms of what
we're talking about today, when UH people are so uh,
pitchforky and torchy that they won't let their own allies speak. Yeah,
I mean that is that is a big question, and
it's an important question that the piece raises of. Well.

(25:40):
Is all of this having a chilling effect on our
ability to even have debates and voice opinions in a
respectful way? Are we now just so trigger happy but
also so fearful of how trigger happy we are that
we are kind of losing authenticity? I mean, I personally

(26:00):
took issue with the piece. For instance, when Shade gets
a little snarky about microaggressions, which we focused on in
our podcast on quote unquote exotic women, on exoticizing women
of color, like saying, oh you're so exotic? That is
an example of a micro aggression. These daily, tiny slights

(26:22):
just chip away and remind people that they are the other.
And here's a white guy saying, oh your microaggressions or
just two PC blah blah blah. Like with that, I
just want to say, hey, man, check your privilege. But
then what am I doing? I'm being a social justice warrior,
But in that case, I don't really mind, Like I don't,
I don't know. And when people to me and This

(26:46):
is also reflective of spending a lot of time on
the stuff I've Never told you YouTube channel and just
watching the comments and interacting with commenters there, because it's
a whole different world and it's really fascinating also disturbing.
Sometimes people who want nothing to do with your so
called political correctness and oh microaggressions are just made up

(27:08):
problems to me, says no, I think that you just
aren't exercising empathy. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a big thing.
And I think that that's that's the line that you
need to walk in terms of having empathy no matter
who you are or what side of the fence that
you fall on on a certain issue. I think you

(27:28):
need to exercise or it would be nice if people
would exercise empathy, and like we said, remember the humanity
of the person talking, because it's the kind of thing
where you know, it's like, okay, well, if people are are,
you know, being activists in whatever subculture or group or
arena of the world, Um, we should support them for it. Yeah,

(27:52):
And we could sit here and just kind of keep
slogging through this whole social justice lay or question, but
I think it might be better served as a transition
point to maybe a more important question of well, can
reblogs on Tumbler change the world? Does any of this

(28:14):
stuff that we're tweeting about and hashtagging and sharing on Facebook?
Does it really matter? Any answer is yes and no,
and we're going to talk about that when we come
right back from a quick break and now back to
the show. Okay, so does retweeting a feminist activists tweet

(28:38):
help anyone? Does reblogging a post about racism help anyone?
As Kristen said, yes or no, and we shouldn't necessarily
knock it over PBS media shift. They were saying that
while SELA activists are often maligned, they do play an
integral role in raising awareness, a truly powerful agent for

(28:58):
change that makes a strong and commitment to act in
whatever manner necessary to achieve the desired result. So basically, like,
it's great that you're reblogging that thing about the racist
thing on the news, or you know the feminist who's
being outspoken, but if you're going to be a true
activist about things beyond just the reblogging and the retweeting,

(29:19):
maybe you know it's time to leave your house and
actually sign a petition or volunteer for something. Yeah, I mean,
but but the first step along the way, someone like
Lieba Rubinstein, whose Tumblers director of outreach, she would say,
the first step to doing that is raising the awareness
to an issue. So she told Forbes magazine quote, it
doesn't mean that it inherently creates activists just because you

(29:42):
reach one million people with a YouTube video, but it
helps increase the chances of converting a greater number of
those people up that ladder of engagement. And I will say,
Caroline to loot of our own horn. That makes me
my heart swell ten tho times over. We hear and
have heard from men and women and girls and boys,

(30:06):
not so many boys, but girls about how listening to
the podcast, watching the videos has made them aware of feminism.
They identify as feminists because of stuff I've never told you.
It's awareness is the first step. Yeah, and I mean
we have. This is something that we've seen And I
say we meaning you know, all of us, the general

(30:27):
we that we've seen worldwide playing a role in social
movements for a long time. I mean before we even
had Tumbler, before Tumbler was even a twinkle in the
eye of the internet. Um, we had text message coordinated protests.
For instance, in two thousand one, Philippine and President Joseph
Estrada was ousted thanks to a text campaign that helped

(30:52):
force him out of office. Yeah. Clay Squirky wrote all
about this in a really detailed article over at Foreign
Paul Let's see, and described Estrata as quote the first
time that social media had helped force out a national leader.
And essentially, Scurkey argues that social media and even text
messages aren't necessarily going to be the change obviously, but

(31:17):
they've been instrumental as the coordinators of change. And so similarly,
in two thousand four, we have another text messaging campaign
that comes to the rescue to oust Spanish Prime Minister
Jose Maria Asnar. And then in two thousand nine, the
Moldova Communist Party lost power after demonstrations coordinated via text

(31:38):
message and social media. But not every social media and
text message coordinated campaign is a success, because there have
been failures of attempted social media coordinated revolutions that were
then simply met by government crackdowns. Yeah, and Screwky writes, though,
that social media have become coordinating tools for near really

(32:00):
all of the world's political movements. I mean, it's not
just people in countries with restricted access to the Internet
or facing a whole lot of censorship issues. You know,
there have been so many recent examples, and again Ferguson
is one of them, of people using social media to
really sort of galvanize a movement. So Jane Denby at Politico,

(32:26):
who cited earlier, calls all of this speaking of Ferguson,
a new civil rights movement that was first stoked in
by the Trayvon Martin shooting and then later by George
Zimmerman's acquitted George Zimmerman being the man who shot and
killed Trayvon Martin and Denbi rights quote. This re energized

(32:47):
millennial movement, which will make itself felt all the more
in differs from its half century old civil rights era
forbear in a number of important ways. One, it is
driven and far more by social media and hashtags than
marches and open air rallies. So going back to that

(33:08):
question of can read blogs change the world, well in
this example, yeah, So consider the recent hashtag black Lives Matter.
This was started by Petrucci Cohler's opal To Metti and
Alicia Garza, and it went viral, it inspired all sorts
of demonstrations and protests, and it's a hashtag that I

(33:33):
think will be around for a long time. Um So,
then when we move up to August, with Michael Brown
shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, and later the grand jury decision
to not try Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot
and killed him, we see the revival of the hashtag

(33:53):
black Lives Matter with Dian's and a Black Friday boycott
in November, and I mean, that's pretty incredible to think
that that hashtag, which was created a couple of years ago,
is still being used now. When you think about the
nature of the Internet and how ephemeral everything is. One

(34:13):
thing is in one day and out the next, well,
I think, you know, it's it's so easy to dismiss,
for instance, uh, pictures posted on Tumbler of dieans or
or any of these boycotts or marches or anything. It's
very easy to dismiss that as that's just you know,
dumb millennials. You know, they're not doing anything real or

(34:34):
they're not active being activists in any way that it
will be effective. But I think the very important thing
about things like this, and with Tumbler specifically, is that
you know, for so long in our modern media, UM,
we have only been able to see and interact with
the things that the network news has presented to us

(34:55):
as worthy of being news. And typically that's just like
you know what the president then said that day, or
you know what your mayor said that day, And Tumbler
is sort of a way of presenting an entirely different
side to the news and to modern events. UM. It's
a way of seeing yourself and your own community and

(35:15):
your own interests reflected. And so then when other people
see that, even if they are dismissive, they can maybe
eventually start to say, like, huh, maybe there's something to
this well. And to that very point, Tumbler created news
not too long ago on March sixth, two thousand fifteen,
with hashtag blackout Day, which began with a Tumbler user

(35:39):
and then the hashtag ended up trending on Twitter and
it was a grassroots recognition of people of color on
social media. And the Tumbler user, expect the Greatest, was
a person who thought this up. And it was such
a simple but powerful concept because this user was like,
you know what, there are so many white people on

(36:01):
my dashboard. I would really love to see more people
who look like me. So he said, hey, people of color,
on March six, post yourselfies, reblog images of famous black
people like whomever you respect. Let's flood social media with
people who look like us, essentially, And it worked and

(36:22):
it went viral, and you have ABC News and all
sorts of other national media outlets covering it and then
starting conversations among people who aren't on Tumblr, like, oh,
what does this blackout day? What does that mean? At
the very least, that's what you get. At the very least,
you get people going, what is that? Is that? What
is this dumb thing? Because at least once they asked

(36:42):
the question, they might follow through to find out what
it is, and who knows, maybe they will say, oh wow,
I had no idea. And also too, when it comes
to using social media to influence the news cycle, it's
incredible to see from two thousand twelve with the Trayvon
Martin shooting, how it took a long time for that
to become national news compared to just two years later

(37:06):
with Michael Brown shooting. The news of it went out
on Twitter from people in Ferguson, they're witnessing the entire
thing going down. It hit the news cycle almost immediately. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But alongside all of the racial issues that are brought
to the forefront thanks to social media and you know,

(37:27):
so called social justice warriors on social media sites, you know,
we also have issues in and around feminism and using
that online and hashtag activism to bring these issues to
the forefront. That's right. In our podcast on Women on Twitter,
we talked about how Mickey Kendall's hashtag solidarity is for

(37:49):
white women started unadmittedly difficult but necessary conversation about race
and feminism and the ten and see for white feminists
to dominate the mainstream conversations about gender equality to the
detriment of the needs and perspectives of women of color. Yeah,

(38:12):
and so like it or not. As Tula Wolf noted
over at Huffington's post, these people, these people that we
refer to as social justice warriors, will keep you on
your toes. You might not think that you're being hurtful
or harmful, or maybe you are trying to be hurtful
or harmful, depending on what the situation is. But it's

(38:32):
sort of a community. It sort of circles the wagons
around whatever the community and question is to point at
it and say this is wrong, this is not allowed. Yeah,
it will sniff out your heterocentrist, ablest classes, racists, eccentric
language from a mile away. Yeah, exactly. And so, for instance,

(38:54):
in addition to solidarity is for white women, we also
got the hashtag yes all women in response to the
hashtag of not all men, which of course itself was
in response to very disturbed individual Elliott Rogers misogynistic murder spree.
And the effect of that hashtag guess all women brought

(39:16):
viral attention to rape culture. I feel like that that
hashtag was so instrumental in bringing a very like in
group term like rape culture into broader conversations. And we've
also though on the flip side of this talk before
about how feminist twitter can get ugly on itself. We cited,

(39:40):
for instance, Jonathan Shade's piece in New York Magazine that
quoted a former editor over at Feminist NG who said, quote,
everyone is so scared to speak right now. He also
quoted Hanna Rosen, who is the author of the End
of Men, who is a feminist, but she has no
interest in engaging with feminist Twitter because as they will pounds. Yeah. Yeah.

(40:03):
She basically voiced the same thing that the feministic editor
did by saying, you know, it's exhausting and anything I
say is going to be misinterpreted by someone, and I
just don't want to deal with it. Well, in the
promotion of her book, I forget the exact promotional hashtag
they use, but it was something like the end of
the patriarchy. It was something suggesting that there was no

(40:25):
more need for feminism and as you can imagine, that
rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Yeah, exactly. Um. Well,
if we look at the journal Feminist Media Studies, they
devoted part of their issue number two of Feminism, Hashtag
and Violence against Women and Girls to this whole issue

(40:46):
of feminist hashtag and social justice for instance, um with
their examination of hashtags and raising awareness about violence against
women and girls. Susan Barrage and Laura Portwood spacer right.
The essays in the journal were really there to emphasize
the potential of feminist hashtags to expose the pervasiveness of

(41:08):
gendered violence, creating a space for women and girls to
share their own experiences and through doing so, challenge common
sense understandings of this abuse and promote gendered solidarity. But
they go on to say, quote at the same time,
these scholars are sensitive to the potential dangers of these
hashtag campaigns in oversimplifying complex issues, as well as the

(41:32):
threats of gendered violence that occur within online spaces themselves.
Still in a nutshell, social media and hashtags and sala activism, activism,
whatever you wanna call it is not going to be
the answer, right, of course, it's not going to be
the answer, but it's a powerful tool. It can be
a powerful tool. Although uh Time columnist Sarah Miller did

(41:55):
wonder this past Oscar season whether or not some social
media activist efforts would just be better spent elsewhere. Yeah,
I mean, I get Sarah Miller's frustration. She was talking
about to Ask Her More campaign, which was basically an
online effort to get uh quote unquote journalists at award

(42:19):
shows to ask female celebrities, directors, actresses, whoever. Um, ask
her more about the work she's done, her her cares
in life, not just like who she's wearing. Um. I
I love the idea of ask her more because I
I'm never gonna buy givon she down, So it's fine,

(42:43):
I don't care. Um. But Miller's argument was like, this
is ridiculous, Like we need to be focusing our feminist
energies on other things. We don't need to be telling
celebrities that they need to describe their vision for world
peace in six syllables. Um. You know, maybe I just
want to watch an Awards show and let my brain
drip out my ears and hear what kind of dress

(43:05):
someone's wearing so that that designer can get recognition. And
my question is, like, do you really care about the
designer and the people who made the dress getting recognition?
But it does exemplify the social justice warrior be in
a lot of people's bonnets, which is, can you just relax?
Can you just let the oscars be the oscars and
let a red carpet be a red carpet and like

(43:27):
have women on parade every now and then and stop
taking everything so seriously no, I mean I'm saying I
get those comments a lot on YouTube, and that is
something that I think about because sometimes I do catch
myself in my own day to day life getting really
stirred up and really emotional an upset about certain things,

(43:53):
and so I do wonder sometimes like well, maybe I
should just relax, But then as soon as I think
it out relaxing, then it just feels lazy and I
remember that there's work to be done. So I don't know.
I honestly I don't know. I mean I think that
we should relax in the sense of relax how quickly

(44:16):
we might respond to something and how violently, whether with
words or fists, that we respond to something, or relax
how quickly we are to assume that the other person
meant harm, or that they are willfully ignorant, or that
they are incapable of change, right, which is again going
back to the example of the person who gently corrected

(44:38):
our stigmatizing language. Yes, yes, that person would had faith
that we could and would change, and we did. But
you know, we mentioned earlier in the podcast, like way
earlier that UM, the whole social justice online sell activism
movement was way more fragmented UM and way more spread

(45:02):
out than any other offline movements we've had in history,
which typically were led by one charismatic individual, typically a man.
And so it's almost like when you're telling when you're
telling UH, someone who's an online social justice warrior to
shut up and relax. Chances are that person is perhaps

(45:24):
a woman or a person of color, um, a person
who is just different in some way than the norm
of a white, heterosexual, sys gender male. And so I'm
not saying that we should always jump to being offended,
but I am saying that it perhaps the fact that
certain people who have not historically been given the chance

(45:45):
to speak, uh, is that's freaking people out exactly. I
think that's everything. I think that disenfranchised and marginalized groups
have platforms in a voice and a reach like never before.
And so of course there's this term to just dismiss it,
to just with just the flick of a wrist say no. Well,

(46:08):
especially if you yourself, whoever you are, if you yourself
consider yourself to be a liberal minded individual who's accepting
and not racist and whatever. If if you say something,
not being willfully ignorant, but just saying something and someone
corrects you and says you know you're wrong, you shouldn't
say this, you might get offended, especially if you are

(46:29):
a white heterosexual sis gender man who is not used
to being wrong um and being corrected. I mean a
lot of people, it's very easy to be sensitive to
any type of criticism or critique or correction. Um. And
so for a lot of people, they are starting to
feel uncomfortable because they are being corrected and things like
privilege are being pointed out. Yeah, I mean, and that

(46:50):
also applies to this gender, heterosexual, white female podcasters. It
doesn't need we are not we are not above the frame. No. Well,
I'm really curious for listeners to weigh in on this,
because if you spend a lot of time on the Internet,
like we do, chances are you run across this. But

(47:11):
I don't. I don't think that it's just limited to
the Internet. I think it is reflective of a real
world cultural shift that's happening. I don't want to call
the culture war, but I think that this these online conversations, campaigns, activisms,
activism has if anything, established awareness and sparked offline conversations.

(47:37):
And so what do we think about all of this?
Do you just you know, flick it away, considering it
all just PC nonsense, or do you think that, yes,
this kind of social justice in digital platforms can in
fact change the world. Let us tell your thoughts, Mom

(47:58):
stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email address,
and Hey, if you want to utilize your social media power,
you can tweet us at mom Stuff podcasts, or messages
on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. I have a letter here
about our Women in Construction episode from a listener who

(48:19):
would like to remain anonymous. She says, thank you so
much for doing the Women in Construction podcast. I was
part of that tiny two point six percent of women
in construction, and you did such a great job discussing
the realities of being a woman in this industry. I
worked in construction management, which means I wasn't always on
the construction site, but I still have enough stories to
last all lifetime. I have a background in engineering, and

(48:42):
you asked if there was any preparation or warning in
school about the realities of the industry. I can't speak
for every school, but my fairly progressive school definitely did
not prepare me for what I was getting into. I
had the idea that I would feel like wonder woman.
I'd go in work hard, breakdown gender barriers. Wow. I disappointed.
Although I do think I was part of a slow change.

(49:03):
The reality is having to bite your tongue more often
than not because you run the risk of getting fired.
The overall feeling I found in the industry was that
there is no problem. They genuinely believe the only reason
women aren't in construction is because they don't want to
do construction. I even had a hiring manager tell me
that women at the company have not faced any sexism
at work. Meanwhile, my two female coworkers and I had

(49:26):
exchanged all sorts of countless stories. It's hard, there's no
question about it, but that being said, there are ways
to deal with it in groups for women in the
industry to find support and help. I truly hope to
see the industry grow and change slowly. I know it will.
Thanks again for covering this topic and for all of
your podcasts. I'm a longtime fan and really love what
you did with the show. I've learned so much from

(49:47):
you ladies over the years. So I've got to let
her here from Mackenzie about our podcast on women in
architect Sure she writes first and foremost, I am a
huge fan of your podcast. I listened to it every
day on my way to work, and that's why I
was so excited to see an episode on women in architecture.
I'm a twenty year old architectural technologist living in Vancouver, Canada.

(50:08):
Even in my short time in the field, I've experienced
the role of sexism in the workplace. My office is male,
and out of the three women in the workplace, there's
an interior designer and another tech like myself. I've never
worked with a registered female architect. Being a young woman
in an office full of middle aged men, I feel
like I'm treated differently than my male colleagues at the

(50:28):
same age and education. Soon after I started, I was
asked to learn the receptionist desk so I would be
able to use the phone system if the receptionist had
to go out. This slightly agitated me, or they asking
me this because I was a junior, or because I
was the female junior. I'm on the fence about going
back to school to become an architect. I don't think
a lot of people know how much commitment it is.

(50:51):
In Canada. You need a bachelor degree, which is four years,
Then you need a master's which could be two to
three years, and then you need three years of internship
hours which you get paid very poorly, and then there's
a series of oral and written exams. So all in all,
that's ten years of schooling you have to commit to,
and ten years is if you don't take time off
to work in the field for more experience. I think

(51:11):
a lot of women go into school thinking they will
become architects, but women simply don't finish because life gets
in the way. By the time I'm thirty, I'd like
to be thinking of getting married and having children. That's
why I don't think I could commit to being an architect.
Another thing I wanted to mention is that not all
architects design buildings. A lot of what architecture involves is
coordination with different engineers and working with construction managers and contractors.

(51:35):
You have to have a very strong personality to solve
some of the situations. With the more rough around the
edges contractors, I could easily see female project architects being
harassed more than males on the construction site. As far
as design wise, women have leaned more toward interior design
as a career than architecture. People see interior design as
a softer, less important job. Women can't build things, but

(51:57):
they can decorate. In conclusion, and I do think women
are making headway in architecture, and it's just about a
matter of time before it's even so. Thanks Mackenzie, and
thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff at
how stuff works dot com is our email address and
for links to all of our social media as well
as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with our sources,

(52:18):
head on over to stuff mom Never Told You dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Doesn't how stuff works dot com.