Social justice warrior (SJW) is apejorative term andinternet meme mostly used for an individual who promotessocially progressive,left-wing orliberal views, includingenvironmentalism,affirmative action,gun control,single payer healthcare,progressive taxation,feminism,abortion,gay and transgender rights, andmulticulturalism.[7] The accusation that somebody is an SJW carries implications that they are pursuingpersonal validation rather than any deep-seatedconviction, and engaging indisingenuous arguments.[3][8]
The phrase originated in the late 20th century as a neutral or positive term for people engaged insocial justice activism.[1] In 2011, when the term first appeared onTwitter, it changed from a primarily positive term to an overwhelmingly negative one.[1] During theGamergate controversy, the term was adopted by what would become thealt-right, and the negative connotations gained increased usage which would eventually overshadow its origins.[2][6][9]
A term with a similar meaning iswokescold.
Dating back to 1824, the termsocial justice refers to justice on a societal level.[10] From the early 1990s to the early 2000s,social-justice warrior was used as a neutral or complimentary phrase, as when a 1991Montreal Gazette article describes union activistMichel Chartrand as a "Quebec nationalist and social-justice warrior".[1]
Katherine Martin, the head of U.S. dictionaries atOxford University Press, said in 2015 that "[a]ll of the examples I've seen until quite recently are lionizing the person".[1] As of 2015[update], theOxford English Dictionary had not done a full search for the earliest usage.[1]Merriam-Webster dates the earliest use of the term to 1945.[5]
According to Martin, the term switched from primarily positive to negative around 2011, when it was first used as an insult onTwitter.[1] The term first appeared onUrban Dictionary in 2011 and on theSomething Awful forums in 2013.[6] According toKnow Your Meme, the pejorative term "keyboard warrior", which describes a person who is unreasonably angry and hides behind their keyboard, may be a precursor to the "social justice warrior".[6] The negative connotation has primarily been aimed at those espousing views adhering tosocial progressivism, cultural inclusivity, orfeminism.[11][1][2] Scott Selisker writes inNew Literary History that the SJW is often criticised as the "stereotype of the feminist as unreasonable, sanctimonious, biased, and self-aggrandizing".[11] Use of the term has also been described as attempting to degrade the motivations of the person accused of being an SJW, implying that their motives are "for personal validation rather than out of any deep-seated conviction".[3][8] Allegra Ringo inVice writes that "in other words, SJWs don't hold strong principles, but they pretend to. The problem is, that's not a real category of people. It's simply a way to dismiss anyone who brings up social justice."[8]
The term's negative use became mainstream due to the 2014Gamergate harassment campaign, where it emerged as the favored term of Gamergate proponents and was popularized on websites such asReddit,4chan, andTwitter. Gamergate supporters used the term to criticise what they claimed were unwanted external influences in video game media from progressive sources.[1][12] Martin states that "the perceived orthodoxy [of progressive politics] has prompted a backlash among people who feel their speech is being policed".[1] InInternet andvideo game culture, the phrase is broadly associated with a widerculture war that also included the 2015Sad Puppies campaign that affected theHugo Awards.[2][13] A study fromFeminist Media Studies noted that "the appropriation of SJW as a memeticstraw man became commonplace during and following the upheaval of #Gamergate."[6]
In August 2015,social justice warrior was one of several new words and phrases added toOxford Dictionaries.[1][14][15]
A Social Justice Warrior, or SJW, is any person, female or male, who argues online for political correctness or feminism. 'Social justice' may sound like a good thing to many of our readers, but the people who use this term only use it pejoratively.
The dictionary definition ofsocial justice warrior at Wiktionary