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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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You're trying to work out the definition based on the etymology. Words generally don't work that way, and especially so for ideologically invented terms like "microaggression." The function of the word "aggression" in there isn't to describe what happened, it's to provide negative affect for anyone listening to the term.

This is what I'm explicitly against, ideology-based redefinitions that are clear perversions of the words, themselves, generally for the purpose of leveraging positive/negative affect for ideological purposes. War is Peace and all. No, sorry. We already have definitions.

The defining portion of a microaggression is that the microaggressor genuinely has no idea that he's doing anything aggravating to the microaggressed-upon. Their failure to model the other person well enough to recognize that what they said would be aggravating to them is enough to describe as an act of (micro) aggression.

I'm sure they genuinely have no idea that by doing this redefinition, they're microaggravating me. But if their definition holds, then again, they are committing a little act of violence against me every time they use the term that way.

This is what I'm explicitly against, ideology-based redefinitions that are clear perversions of the words, themselves, generally for the purpose of leveraging positive/negative affect for ideological purposes. War is Peace and all. No, sorry. We already have definitions.

Fair enough, but terms mean things based on how they're used, and the progressive identity politics crowd have done a pretty good job using this term (since they're generally the only ones who want to use it anyway). These people own the humanities and the media, so it'll be hard to keep them from redefining words as they see fit.

My personal attitude is that a rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Let's call it a microaggression and also acknowledge that microaggressions can be aggravating, they can be totally awesome and positive, they can be neutral, and anything in between, depending on the details. Just like how a White Supremacist can be a black egalitarian in treating individuals as individuals rather than representatives of their race, which means that white supremacists can be awesome people that we want more of in this society, depending on the details.

I'm sure they genuinely have no idea that by doing this redefinition, they're microaggravating me. But if their definition holds, then again, they are committing a little act of violence against me every time they use the term that way.

Absolutely. What did you think decolonization social justice meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? No, it's righteous violence to take away the chains that people we've judged as the oppressors are using to oppress the people we've judged as the oppressed. See, they've already depicted themselves as the Chad and you as the soyjack judged that they're fighting for Justice and that the people they like really are The Oppressed, which means that your complaints about them microaggressing upon you don't count.

It's impressive what you can accomplish when logic, rationality, and reason are deemed as oppressive tools of white supremacy that should be discarded used selectively as needed to achieve the desired outcome.

Fair enough, but terms mean things based on how they're used, and the progressive identity politics crowd have done a pretty good job using this term (since they're generally the only ones who want to use it anyway). These people own the humanities and the media, so it'll be hard to keep them from redefining words as they see fit.

I can simply regularly point out that War is Not Peace, that There Are Four Lights. Maybe people will not listen to me. I'm just some guy on an Internet Forum. But as for me and my comments, we'll just point out what is true and not worry too much about what bad things nebulous people may or may not continue to do (if I don't do what... start shooting people? I'm not going to stop them). Yes, people will still do bad things. No, I will not call those bad things good things. Sure, they might persist in recruiting others to do bad things. What did you think the gospel of Christ meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Righteous violence against political opponents? That we're going to magically stop people from doing bad things by writing comments in an Internet Forum? Mostly, we try to hold on to some measure of truth, observe that the wickedness of man becomes great in the Earth, and hope to not have to suffer too terribly in the intervening time.