ArbitraryValue,

There’s an essay that I agree with about that sort of definition.

Here’s a relevant excerpt:

I feel like every single term in social justice terminology has a totally unobjectionable and obviously important meaning – and then is actually used a completely different way.

The closest analogy I can think of is those religious people who say “God is just another word for the order and beauty in the Universe” – and then later pray to God to smite their enemies. And if you criticize them for doing the latter, they say “But God just means there is order and beauty in the universe, surely you’re not objecting to that?”

The result is that people can accuse people of “privilege” or “mansplaining” no matter what they do, and then when people criticize the concept of “privilege” they retreat back to “but ‘privilege’ just means you’re interrupting women in a women-only safe space. Surely no one can object to criticizing people who do that?”

Let’s say that, for example, I affirmed my belief that people should be hired based on their ability rather than on their sex, but then I said that there are more men than women in software development mainly due to biological differences. That doesn’t go against your definition, but do you think most feminists would react well to it? They didn’t when James Damore said it, or when the president of Harvard said something similar…

(This is despite the fact that it’s commonly accepted that biological differences between the sexes are the main reason why there are more men than women who are violent criminals.)

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