#sjas

Hey guys! Mini-thinkpiece! My first! All it needs is a clickbait title: South Park bugged me for the first eight minutes until I realized it was the same feeling I used to get when they were making fun of Christians. Sometimes you can't appreciate a joke or see it from the perspective of those who made it because you're too busy feeling slighted. It's a bummer, because if you get start getting offended by a few small things you can easily miss that everything else in the episode is hilarious. The social justice guy being a frat boy and the horde of pregnant Mexican women craving tacos is so absurd. It's not lazy offensiveness. I dunno who calls it "PC" anymore (except maybe people in their 40s, or straight teenage boys who write off movements they don't understand with labels) but social justice is becoming an institution for sure, and SP takes on institutions. It is funny though how the old guys on the farm in that one scene don't expect social awareness to stick around. 5.9 years out of 6 to go until things go back to normal, huh? Interesting figure-- Matt and Trey must think the whole social justice thing really kicked off the moment Caitlyn Jenner transitioned. Or maybe the old guys scene just totally flew over my head, and someone should explain to me the element that I'm overlooking. There might be one thing Matt and Trey themselves have overlooked, though-- there was comparatively little to no connective media around the last time "PC" was a thing. But who knows. I personally think everything happening now is due to our neutral Internet- granting us viewpoints and conversations that TV and newspapers never did- but maybe the next generation will push against what they deem "restrictive" awareness. The pendulum swings; things could get worse again before they get better. You might emit, after, all that, "Well, Sean, you are a straight, white, Caucasian guy with blonde hair and blue eyes, of course you aren't offended." But I was offended. When the PC fraternity was full of blonde white "bros" like me, I instantly thought they should have been women and/or PoCs. Remember what I said about missing the joke? When PC Principal was beating the sh*t out of Cartman and was constantly being played as unstable, oblivious, and unsympathetic, I thought it was unfair-- until I realized I had no idea why I was sympathizing with Cartman- the "evilest kid in the world" according to his creators- who had hitherto been attempting to frame PC Principal for molestation of Butters. Of course Matt and Trey know most social justice advocates don't fit the mold of PC Principal-- it's utterly ridiculous. Exactly. Utterly ridiculous, to the point where thinking about it later made me crack up. Especially when I realized, by getting stung over what was basically an overblown caricature of myself, I was mirroring the ignorant "PC guy" even more. Some days I just want to be way, way more self-aware than I am. In fact, self-awareness is another of South Park's strong points. Offensive humor is OK, says Cartman, because it can help start a dialogue. He looks at Kyle holding a slice of chocolate cake. "Well, Kyle? You have your cake. Eat it, too." I'm still ruffled by a few things. I'm concerned a lot of South Park's audience (those teenage white boys I mentioned earlier) might not think about it as hard as I did and view social justice advocates with even greater hostility and renewed use of a certain outdated expression. I looked up the dictionary usage note for "politically correct" on my 2008 Macbook's OS X 10.6.8 dictionary app, and thought it summed up my thoughts on the term nicely:

The tediously overworked phrase politically correct can be used only with a smile, whether of irony or slightly embarrassed affection. Originally, the politically correct were those who ardently championed the rights of women, people of color, homosexuals, and other long-marginalized groups. But politically correct rapidly came to be associated with adherents who were overscrupulous in these observances, in short, zealots. Today most people recognize the fundamental justice of many, if not all, the legal and social advances linked to political correctness, but no one really cares to be called PC. The fight has largely been won, at least de jure if not always de facto, and so the term now sounds a bit old-fashioned, and usually carries an undertone of mild vexation or benign indulgence: Oh, Joan, she's so politically correct!

Sounds like heaven on earth for some people on this website. 

I feel like I should make a few pointers before I give my answer:

Plebcomics is female, which should be common sense for anyone involving themselves in this dilemma.

I’m sure that she’s bisexual herself, and at one point was even questioning her gender-identity, so I don’t see why a self-proclaimed “f*ggot” should feel the need to censor herself. And no, it’s not internalized homophobia.

The comics she draws are almost always based on actual posts between tumblr extremists and other tumblr users (often times word-for word, and with characters matching the description of the mentioned users, which is why she is accused of using people of other races as mouthpeices).

I’ll will say that there are instances where I haven’t necessarily agreed with Pleb’s take on certain topics, but overall, I believe that she’s actually a benefit to the progression of social justice, relatively speaking.

The people she targets in her comics are not social justice advocates, they are people who exploit social justice for their own personal gain; I don’t even call then Social Justice Warriors, I call them Social Justice Abusers. What Pleb does is point out the hypocrisy of SJAs and how their behavior stunts the progression of social justice.

Pleb’s actions have not harmed a single person, privileged or oppressed, however SJA’s believe that her different opinions were enough justification to contact her employer, send them paraphernalia (ironically paralleling their objection to 4chan spamming tumblr’s tags with porn and gore), and making her quit a job she loved. All for what? So a few bitter people wouldn’t have to see her comics anymore? when they could have just blocked her?

Was she really that much of a detriment to the growth of equality that she deserved to lose possibly her only source of income, which could have been supporting her as well as her family members? OF COURSE NOT. She already suffers from depression, so whose to say that losing this job wouldn’t have put her over the edge? You’d think that a group of people who claim to speak for the oppressed would be more sensitive to that sort of thing, but more often than not I’ve seen SJAs telling people to kill themselves for petty differences in opinions.

So no, I do not think that Plebcomics deserved to lose her job for something that would have had no impact on her job performance.

By calling them "abusers" as opposed to "warriors", it would make it clear that the people being referred to aren't "crusaders" for social equality, but rather people who exploit  social justice for their own personal gain,

people who attack others for mild disagreements,

people who think that hatred is healthy and suitable to get a message across,

people who trivialize gay and trans rights by telling people they can choose their gender and sexuality (which ironically validates the claims of homophobes, while invalidating the struggles of people conflicted with their identities),

people who harass, bully, and send death threats to people who disagree with them, while simultaneously telling others to tag for trigger warnings (which they also trivialize),

people who, instead of trying to stop oppression or raise awareness of inequality, would rather claim a position as an oppressed member of society, and use that as a platform to voice their close-minded and biased opinions.