As all good social justice warriors know, staying woke takes a lot of effort. How does one know when a microaggression is occurring? What content deserves a trigger warning? Luckily, Lisa De Pasquale’s guidebook, “The Social Justice Warrior Handbook,” offers tongue-in-cheek tips and tricks for college students and millennials to stay perpetually outraged.
While the work is a satirical take on the outrage consuming college campuses, it’s filled with anecdotes that are true to life. Remember when Facebook increased the number of gender options to 58? The social network was derided for not being inclusive enough to people who identify outside of those pre-selected options until they relented to mounting pressure from LGBT activists, an example of “progress” made by woke social justice warriors De Pasquale highlights in the chapter entitled “What To Do When Someone Assumes Your Gender.”
Last week, De Pasquale was slated to speak at the University of California at Berkeley as part of the highly publicized “Free Speech Week,” but was not able to do so after the student group hosting the weeklong event faced mounting pressure from campus officials, spurring them to cancel. She explained that many of the tactics employed to foil the event are ones outlined in her “Handbook.”
Each chapter tackles how to handle various problematic situations, like how to stop a gendered fetus shower or what to do when someone assumes your gender. The “How to Forage for Outrage Fodder, i.e. ‘Stay Woke'” chapter has a special section on the Kardashians.
“Every day the Kardashian/Jenner women post images and videos on social media that can be used to highlight their problematic behavior and the microaggressions Social Justice warriors need to fight,” she writes. A list of their problematic behavior which social justice warriors must continually oppose includes their repeated cultural appropriation, embracing capitalism, being insensitive to those who aren’t wealthy, wearing waist trainers, and using terms like “yassssss, queen, slay.”
Bonus: the book is illustrated!
I of course colored them in with my 64-count set of Crayola crayons, as any millennial would. I’m not great at staying inside the lines. Come at me.
The second to last section of the book provides an exhaustive list of all the things social justice warriors are entitled to, which is nothing, as represented in the blank pages that follow. The final section is an interactive workbook of exercises to inspire millennials to continue on their path to wokeness. One prompt urges handbook readers to “confess your privilege,” an assignment that mirrors a San Diego State University professor offering extra credit to her students for filling out a “White Privilege Checklist.”
For parents who want to send their kids off to college with an interactive workbook that’s more fun and timely than the coloring books in their university therapist’s office, “The Social Justice Warrior Handbook” is your ticket.
