A Social Justice Warrior (SJW) is a characterization of an online social justice activist commonly used as a pejorative by ideological opponents to suggest the use of issues like sexism, racism, or homophobia as a pretense to advocate for a particular political agenda. Although most commonly used as a negative, some have reappropriated the term as a neutral or positive source of identity.
According to blogger Andrew Sullivan, an opponent of what he calls "left-feminism," "SJWs" believe that media should be censored to impact the ongoing cultural discourse. He argued that Twitter's efforts to control harassment of women on its platform amounted to an effort to police speech. Writing in The Nation, Michelle Goldberg responded to Sullivan's accusations: "Perhaps he would argue that the loss of some voices, the voices of those who can’t withstand daily torrents of threats and slurs, is a worthwhile price to pay for an absolutely unfettered Twittersphere. If so, he should make that case, rather than fantasizing that feminists are more often the silencers than the silenced."
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