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Translations from the Wokish

A Plain-Language Encyclopedia of Social Justice Terminology

0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

About ‘Translations from the Wokish’

This encyclopedia of Social Justice terminology exists for a simple purpose: to create in one place a first attempt to pierce the fog and expose the language used by the ideology of Social Justice in plain language so that people can better understand what it is, what it wants, and how it operates in practice. There is currently a great need for such a resource, as Social Justice is rapidly ascendant, and its terminology has risen from relative obscurity to cultural prominence in only a few years. More importantly, these terms are the basis for institutional changes that many decision makers and those impacted by the decisions, once made, don’t understand as clearly as they need to.

As many who have attempted to deal with it or otherwise encountered it will know, Social Justice (as an ideology) relies upon a highly specific, often deeply academic lexicon that makes it difficult to understand. Some of the terminology is highly specialized, and some takes on the status of jargon or buzzwords. Much of what appears in this resource will help to clarify this specialized terminology and explain it in plain language that can be understood by almost anyone.

Of some note, altogether too commonly in Social Justice’s usage, everyday terms have been redefined in specific, which is a strategic move that allows the common parlance understanding of the term to open the door and be a defensible point of retreat while the specific meaning of the term is allowed to do the real work desired of them by Social Justice activists. (We refer to such terms as “Trojan Horse” terms.) In fact, the term “Social Justice” itself (which we intentionally capitalize) is a Trojan Horse term that plays upon the concept of social justice (which we have intentionally not capitalized). The way this works, to use this example, is that Social Justice advances itself by using the normal understanding of the phrase “social justice” while, in fact, being something far more specific and actionable that not all people would recognize by that term. Other Trojan Horse terms include words like “racism” and “misogyny,” which have been redefined under a “systemic” view of societal “power dynamics,” and “antiracism,” which sounds like one thing but means something quite different in specific.

Moreover, the terms aren’t merely difficult to understand on their own because their meanings are embedded in a more complicated, somewhat internally consistent worldview that has been adopted by Social Justice. This will rapidly become apparent to anyone who reads even a small number of the entries in this glossary but may not be entirely apparent from reading only single entries. Understanding the worldview of Social Justice is therefore another goal of this glossary and its parent site and organization, New Discourses. To facilitate this level of learning, the terms in this glossary are heavily cross-referenced to one another, and its users are encouraged to spend some time bouncing through a dozen or more terms to start to get the sense of the semi-coherent ideological worldview called “Social Justice.”

The way this glossary is put together is also important. For the majority of the entries, a “Social Justice Usage” for the term is given at the top. This is, in every case, we present an example or several examples from some authoritative source, whether a website, an academic paper, an essay, or a book, in context and in the words of advocates of the ideology of Social Justice. Below their words, we at New Discourses have offered our own commentary that explain the terms in plain language and also how they are often used. In some entries, in which the word is actually a commonplace word that isn’t necessarily given a clear and specific definition or clear example of usage in the Social Justice literature, the term is provided and explained according to our experience with its usage in Social Justice contexts.

The reason for this structure bears mentioning. We have received countless requests to build this glossary for a long time before we started it, and the reason we never got to the project is that, in that Social Justice tends to be very aggressive and unwelcoming of either criticism or plain-language explanation, we knew that to merely define these terms on our own in plain language would result in being accused of doing so dishonestly. To get around these accusations, we have opted instead to present one or more bona fide Social Justice examples in use for the terms first and then offer only commentary instead of our own explanations. Readers may judge for themselves if we have interpreted the terms honestly and are strongly encouraged to read the Social Justice-approved applications for the terms for themselves.

The intention of this resource is not to present a final product and be done with it. While we have presented these excerpts and our comments in a rather cursory fashion so far, our intention at New Discourses is to continue to flesh out the entries as we have time, adding examples from the Social Justice literature that make their intentions and meanings more clear and continuing to explain those examples in our own plain language so that they can be understood by all. This will add depth to the entries themselves. We also intend to continue adding more terms as we have time. This will add breadth.

[Español]

Revision date: January 29, 2020

 

0-9:

A:

B:

  • Bad immediacy

  • Beautiful trouble

C:

D:

E:

F:

  • Fabianism

  • False consciousness [Español]

  • False empathy

  • Fascism

  • Fat acceptance

  • Fat activism

  • Fat feminism

  • Fat shaming

  • Fat stigma

  • Fat studies

  • Fatshion

  • Fatphobia

  • Feminism

  • Feminist conciousness

  • Feminist empiricism

  • Feminist geography

  • Femme

  • Filipinx

  • First-wave feminism

  • Fluidity

  • Folks

  • Folx

  • Foucauldian

  • Four olds

  • Fourth-wave feminism

  • Frankfurt school

  • Freedom of speech

  • Front hole

G:

  • Gaslight

  • Gender (n.)

  • Gender (v.)

  • Gender-affirming

  • Gender critical

  • Gender identity

  • Gender nonconforming

  • Gender performativity

  • Gender separatism

  • Gender studies

  • Gender traitor

  • Gender violence

  • Gender wage gap

  • Genderfluid

  • Genderfucking

  • Genderqueer

  • Genealogy

  • Generational trauma

  • Genocide

  • God’s eye view

  • Good Old Days, The

  • Good trouble

  • Good white

  • Gramscian

  • Great Reset

  • Grifter

  • Gynephilia

H:

  • Habitus

  • Harm

  • Hate

  • Hate speech

  • Healing

  • Health equity

  • Healthism

  • Healthy at Every Size

  • Hegelian

  • Hegemonic femininity

  • Hegemonic masculinity

  • Hegemony

  • Hermeneutic of suspicion

  • Hermenuetical death

  • Hermeneutical injustice

  • Hermeneutical privacy

  • Hermeticism

  • Herstory

  • Heterocentrism

  • Heteronormativity

  • Heterosexism

  • Hidden curriculum

  • Himpathy

  • Historicism

  • Historiography

  • History

  • Homohysteria

  • Homophobia

  • Honest history

  • Human nature (ideology)

  • Humaning

  • Humanity (as in, “the humanity of black people”)

  • Humanormativity

  • Humxn

  • Hxrstory

  • Hybridity

  • Hyperreality

I:

  • Intersex

  • Invisibility

  • Islamophobia

J:

  • Jews of color

  • Justice

K:

  • Kaleidoscopic consciousness

  • Kink shaming

  • Knower

  • Knowledge(s)

  • Kyriarchy

L:

M:

N:

O:

P:

  • Pansexual

  • Paradox of Tolerance

  • Paralogy

  • Paramorality

  • Parodic

  • Parody, politics of

  • Pastiche

  • Patriarchal reward

  • Patriarchy

  • Pedagogy of discomfort

  • People of color [Deutsch]

  • Performativity

  • Pernicious ignorance

  • Perpetual revolution

  • Personal is political

  • Phallagocentrism

  • Play

  • Plurality

  • Policy (Kendi)

  • Policy violence

  • Political warfare

  • Polylogism

  • Polysexual

  • Position/Positionality

  • Positive consent

  • Positivism

  • Post-humor

  • Postcolonial

  • Postcolonial Theory

  • Postcolonialism

  • Postfeminism

  • Posthuman

  • Post-marxist

  • Postmodern/postmodernism

  • Postmodernity

  • Post-postmodernism

  • Postracial

  • Poststructuralism

  • Post-traumatic slave syndrome

  • Power (systemic)

  • Power-knowledge

  • Praxis

  • Presentation

  • Privilege [Español]

  • Privilege-preserving epistemic pushback

  • Problematic(s)

  • Problematize

  • Progress

  • Progressive

  • Progressive stack

  • Pronouns

  • Pseudo-reality

  • Public-private partnership

  • Punching down

  • Punching up

Q:

R:

S:

  • Safe/safety

  • Safe space

  • Science

  • Scripting

  • Second-wave feminism

  • Segregation

  • Self-identification

  • Semibisexual

  • Sensitivity reader

  • Settler

  • Settler fragility

  • Settler of color

  • Sex

  • Sex-worker exclusionary radical feminist (SWERF)

  • Sexism (systemic)

  • Sexual essentialism

  • Sexually objectifying environment

  • Sexuality

  • Shadow text

  • Sham opposition

  • Shaming

  • Shut up and listen

  • Silencing

  • Simulacrum

  • Situated

  • Skoliosexual

  • Slut shaming

  • Social capital

  • Social construct(ion)

  • Social constructivism

  • Social-emotional learning

  • Social Justice [Deutsch]

  • Social model of disability

  • Socialism

  • Socialization

  • Solidarity

  • Solutionism

  • Soviet man

  • Sovietism

  • Space

  • Speciesism

  • Splaining

  • Stakeholder

  • Stakeholder capitalism

  • Standpoint epistemology

  • Status quo

  • Stay in your lane

  • Stereotype threat

  • Straight passing

  • Strategic essentialism

  • Strategic ignorance

  • Strategic racism

  • Strategic resistance

  • Structural

  • Structuralism

  • Struggle session

  • Studies of science and technology

  • Subaltern

  • Subject

  • Subjectivity

  • Sublation

  • Subordination

  • Subversion

  • Supercapitalism

  • Supremacy

  • Symbolic violence

  • System, the

  • Systemic power

  • Systemic racism

T:

  • Technofeminism

  • Testimonial injustice

  • Text

  • Theory (capital-T)

  • Thin privilege

  • Thinormativity

  • Third gender

  • Third-wave feminism

  • Token

  • Tokenize

  • Tolerance

  • Tone policing

  • Tourist’s gaze

  • Toxic masculinity

  • Traditional masculinity

  • Trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF)

  • Trans man

  • Trans woman

  • Trans women are women (TWAW)

  • Transableism

  • Transactional

  • Transdisciplinary

  • Transgender

  • Transgender rights activist (TRA)

  • Transgenerational trauma

  • Transhysteria

  • Transmisogyny

  • Transphobia

  • Transqueer

  • Transsexual

  • Trauma

  • Trauma-informed

  • Trigender

  • Trigger

  • Trigger warning

  • Truth

  • Truth regime

U:

V:

  • Valid

  • Value-free/value-neutral

  • Vanguardism

  • Victim/victimhood

  • Victim blaming

  • Victimhood culture

  • Voice(s)

  • Voice of color

  • Violence

  • Violence of categorization

  • Visibility

W:

X:

Y:

  • Year Zero

  • Yellow privilege

  • Young Democrats

  • Young Hegelian

  • Yt

Z:

–

0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

27 comments

  3. What about the words & terms that still aren’t blue? Why haven’t the definitions of them been written yet?

    Reply

  4. Your interpretation of the race discussion in america plainly shows a white supremist defence. All those many words amd comments merely prove that white supremacy exists.

    Reply

  6. Re. Ethnomathematics: since the universality of math is merely a Eurocentric assumption, and math needs to be de-colonized, can I tell Canada Revenue Agency I’m not doing my Income Tax this year? It would be eurocentric and white, with a bunch of patriarchy thrown for good measure.

    Reply

  7. “InCel”

    Real definition: Guys who are ugly, short and/or physically disabled, and don’t have enough social status or wealth to “compensate” for it.

    SJW definition: Guys who hate women and have violent fantasies.

    Reply

  8. Dr. Lindsay, please consider including the world “landlord” as an entry in this encyclopedia.

    I see it all the time and know there’s probably a leninist history involved.

    Reply

  11. Please do “white presenting/passing,” too. I often see it used as a way (mostly by white-liberals) to completely shut down minority people who disagree with the SJW framework.

    Effectively, as you mentioned in the “diversity” definition, it means that “true” minorities will innately agree and those who don’t are really just “whitewashed” and therefore forfeit any right to be heard (a great “No True Scotsman” move to destroy any opposition at the get go). And, of course, it actually employs racism to pull this move off.

    Thanks for your work. So much of this ideology gets by on being intentionally vague and relying on dramatic emotional responses, so hopefully having something comprehensive to understand it will help people analyze it better.

    Reply

  12. Lost my public sector job because of ‘woke’, management and human resources use any pretext to target white males and get rid of them, as happened in my case. It’s real and happening everywhere, but especially government employers.

    Reply

  14. Can we get a working definition of “operationalize?” I recently had an EDI course at my work that used the term…a lot.

    Reply

  16. Well, I am well tanned but basicaly a tall, white, European male. Reading just a few entries in your incipient dictionary, trying to make some sense of the woke madness, I already feel targeted perhaps even threatened not just because of my physique, let alone my civic way of life, conservative thoughts, dreams.

    The first twenty five years of my life was almost wasted having been born and raised in a communist dictatorship until I was able to divest them of my presence. The only reason why it was not a complete waste was the love and guidance of my family, friends and my education.
    I am planning to live out the rest of my days in the reasonable freedom and protection of a democratic country, Australia, without the danger of being laid by the heels by another, perhaps even more disagreeable, unpleasant, inhumane utopian order.
    I have to assure all of you, the life under any utopian system, marxist, trotskyist, communist is manifestly brutal to the body and the soul, and the future planned by the followers of the “social justice theory” is no better.
    “Immagine, the future is a boot stepping on a human face, forever!”
              (Orwell 1984/O’Brien)

    The unpleasant concept of the Procrustean bed – a very small, tiny bed – has been invoked in my mind by the dangerous theories and polemics of the “woke” and the “social justice warriors” of the world today.

    (I omitted certain capitalizations of names on purpose which, I think, do not deserve one!)

    Reply

  19. Tiger Woods changed the golf world specifically as a ‘black’ golfer. He is one-quarter Thai, one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Caucasian, one-eighth African-American and one-eighth Native American. I guess the powers that be felt it wasn’t as compelling for him to be “chinese” or “thai” or even “native american”, compared to him being “black” or “african american”. IE when options exist, pick the one that scores highest on the ‘oppression olympics’ and run with that.

    Reply

  25. Hi! I’d love to contact the people behind this dictionary. This is a great start to a very comprehensive encyclopedia for all things related to social justice, and I am hoping this could be developed into its own site that’s more user friendly and supplemented with mixed media to offer the nuances within each concept. I am planning to gather a whole community of people who will help each other figure out all the other definitions and expectations for behaviors, so if that is something you would like to work with, please do let me know!

    Reply

  26. “Solutionism” should be on this list. It originally meant the belief that any problem can be solved through technology but has morphed to mean the idea that racism [or any form of disenfranchisement?] “is a disease which can be cured rather than a structure that needs dismantling” (this definition is from the paper “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame” by Dr. Phillip Ewell. Ewell sights Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me as the source.)

    Reply

  27. “Oppression Olympics” – The comparison of the status of the different groups a person is in compared to another oppressed person. Whoever is in more groups, has a higher status.

    Reply

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