Sigh this is going to be a big one.
SJWs and Progressives
Even though "SJW" tends to be a pejorative from conservatives (and often bigots) to any progressive, I do think it's important to note that what's implied by that epithet and what a progressive is.. have some overlap but aren't necessarily the same thing.
SJWs and Progressives share values. But here's how i would define an SJW
an SJW doesn't have any senses of importance or priority. Big deals are made out of small issues (microaggressions).
an SJW is a product of the internet culture (much like the Alt-Right) and like the Alt-right, they concern themselves with "virtue signaling" over matters of recreational outrage on social networks. The whole subconscious motivation for virtue-signaling is not to call attention to injustice, but rather to signal to your peer-group your social value by feigning outrage over things, thereby showcasing that you are more moral and ethical, and socially aware than the next person.
an SJW focuses on the symbolic over the substansive. So for instance - you will see a lot of arm flailing about women's roles in comic book movies, but for 10 years medical access for women (including abortion rights) have been eroded in state after state. We just elected a President and VP who are going to try to finish off the job federally. If people cared about this as much as they cared about Ghostbusters or Black Widow's role in the Avengers or "free the nipple" campaigns..then these rights wouldn't have been eroded.
SJW culture is ever-more-obscure left-wing vocabulary; of the near-total silence on class issues; of the abandonment of labor organizing as a principal method of political action; of the insistence that people who aren’t already convinced must educate themselves, when convincing others is and has always been the basic requirement of political action; of the confusion of pop culture ephemera with meaningful political victory; of the celebrity worship; of the clumsy Manicheanism that divides the world into all good and all bad; of the use of cruelty, shaming, and character assassination; of the insistence that people within a political movement should “just listen” when someone makes a claim, no matter how outlandish, misguided, unfair, or wrong; of the expectation that everyone should know how to speak and act in perfect congruence with obscure and elitist conceptions of righteous behavior; of the profound conservatism of demanding that everyone occupy a narrow band of cultural practices, refusing to enjoy the world’s vast cultural bounties, out of fear of appropriating someone else’s culture; and, more than anything, of the willful obscurity and inaccessibility, the total and complete indifference towards actually reaching out and building a bigger movement by meeting people halfway and trying to adapt to them as you ask them to adapt to you, the replacement of a mass political movement with an exclusive social circle.
the academic turn within the American left — the way in which the university system has replaced the labor movement as the primary incubator of left-wing ideas — has been an unmitigated disaster. It has taken the materialist philosophies of socialism and corrupted them with a reality-denying postmodernism that prevents us from doing the basic work of politics, which is understanding reality and working to change it. It’s made the left’s behavior the behavior of a cloister, a political straitjacket that compels us to direct our appeals to a tiny fringe rather than to the vast world outside the campus walls. And in replicating that cloistered behavior on social media, the public face of the left has become synonymous with these obscure practices. Meanwhile, unable to articulate its value to the wider world thanks to these same pathologies, the humanities crumble within our universities, despite how badly the world needs them.
Claims that doing yoga is impermissible cultural appropriation, arguments that we should drop phrases like “I see what you mean” because they’re ableist, the assumption that linking to Tweets constitutes violence but harassing and degrading people to the point of suicide is noble activism, filing Title IX claims against people for writing essays in major magazines, allowing your position to become synonymous with attacks on the right to free expression, claiming that you can fight capitalism and the state with hashtags — this is the behavior of a movement that cannot win. We cannot win that way.
And what is worst of all, is the reaction to it. Because now for years the Democrats have abandoned class issues, and the left has defined itself by calling people stupid for every minor infraction. Well a lot of people got tired of being called stupid, being told to "educate yourself" and then went and voted for some douchebag who's edgy.
If the SJW builds a world where everything is offensive, then they wanted to elect a guy where nothing is. Our reactions and over-reactions to each other just keep driving the polarization further and further. The left can never win more people over to it's causes this way.
Star Wars
By the time Star Wars came out our cultural fighting has ramped up to such a level with the extremely petty left (Ctrl Left) and the really obnoxious right (Alt Right) is at such a high point that nothing that grabs the zeitgeist of popular culture is going to go without comment.
It doesn't help that Hollywood, in some areas - especially in the area of science fiction and comic book movies has at times been a bit forceful with the agenda. The reboot of Ghostbusters is a great example. The marketing scheme for that ended up being "if you don't see this movie and if you don't like the movie, you're a sexist", when the whole plot of the movie results in the Ghostgirls shooting the ghost in the dick. Seriously...that's the ending. There's been lots of instances of shit like this in the last few years and it's just off putting even to people who call themselves feminists. It's pushy, preachy, mean spirited, and its not attempting to build bridges and win over people who don't agree with you. It's exists merely to bask in it's own self righteousness.
Star Wars was doing great. I don't like JJ Abrams and I'm kinda tired of franchise culture and for me personally.. Trek and Wars are both dead to me..for reasons totally detached from this discussion. But hey.. great. A girl and a black guy as the heros. When I first saw that I was like AWESOME. Girls and African American kids finally get to to see some heroes that look like them. Shifting Leia from Princess to General was a nice modern move too.
But then JJ started pitching these cultural moves as a selling point for the film and IMHO, that just kinds of shits on it. Think about how Roddenberry approached these issues. He showed a future where this stuff didn't matter. People all lived as one and acted as one as if it were no thing. No one even fucking bothered talking about race issues on a daily b/c they had supposedly "moved on". It was giving us something to aspire to, not dragging us down in the muck of modern debate - thus showing what we are.
JJ's selling the social justice narrative reduced the characters down to a sort of tokenism. Which made it ridiculously easy for the Alt Right to whine about the "SJW liberals in hollywood" and then for the Ctrl Left to go responding to the worst of them - with the middle of this conversation (like always) caught in the cross-fire. You're either a cuck-SJW or a Trump-voting white nationalist and sexist. There is no middle. And it's just crap.
This isnt' to excuse the racism of the alt-right. Not at all. This bubbling up of this racist over-reaction to political correctness run amok, this ..normalizing of 4chan's /b/ is not the fucking world i want either.
The thing that kinda also blows my mind ... is JJ seemed to really want to insert gender and racial progressiveness INTO Star Wars where it never existed before, since Star Wars was always just a popcorn hero-story kinda flick.
It's amazing to me that this entire concept was absent from his brain when making not 1, but 2 god damned Star Trek movies... a series who has a history of being progressive in a very heads on kind of way.
It's almost like he doesn't understand either franchise at all.
Star Trek
No one got mad at DS9 or VOY. Even most moderate or right wing people at the time had this general air that it was fair and about time. Because stuff like this at the time was typically sold as raising up people that were typically ignored or held down. There was rarely (if ever) this undercurrent of "fuck white men". It was inclusive in the truest of senses that never intended to tokenize, cheapen, or alienate.
I do fully expect, knowing where culture has gone... that when Discovery comes out, some shit will be said. Even though Trek, I would argue, is historically one of the most progressive shows to ever grace TV. Some asshole will treat some racist shit about the show, and then idealogues on the left will use that asshole to paint every critic of the show as racist.. and again, the middle will drown out.
In the larger societal "big picture" it's just tragic, because we all get roped into fighting over pop culture. Over fucking movies & tv shows.
Rather than trying to fix practical things in the REAL WORLD. Pop culture ephemera and pouring our political, and moral energy into those fights - seeing those "wins" are somehow notable.. just means we all lose. Because in the end, these fights don't help poor single mothers. I doesn't employ people or protect a black man's voting rights or a gay woman's ability to adopt a child. It doesn't give us health care, it doesn't solve economic inequality ,it doesn't fund our schools.
It merely distracts us and makes us feel good about ourselves when we can paint ourselves as better than the "other side".