I think white-knighting gets a bad rap.
I really wish politics didn't get to me so much, but seeing another racist comment left completely unchecked in an online community I'm somewhat invested in really bothered me today. The only person who remarked negatively on it was me, a person in the demographic being targeted.
I can count on one hand the number of times that I've felt like someone who wasn't in the demographic being targeted stood up for me when I was. And those scant few incidents stick in my memory because they meant a great deal to me. It's not that I can't fight my own battles, it's just that it gets really tiring to always have to.
So, I don't care if this is considered virtue signalling, white knighting or white saviour. I'm not saying people doing this should be awarded trophies or have biopics made about them. But sometimes, be the one who tells a friend, 'Hey, knock it off.' Do it so the people in the demographic being targeted don't always have to feel like it's them against the world, or like that stuff should be considered normal, and gets a pass, because it doesn't bother anyone else.
I agree that speaking up to help out is good.
I think that 'white knighting' in specific is not done to do the thing -- it's not being done to be helpful. It's being done to get something from either you, or someone else looking on. Like 'okay I defended you now you have to sleep with me' nice guy crap. White knighting is a specific sort of BS, rather than any sort of sticking-up-for (but that doesn't stop any accusations of white knighting whenever anybody speaks up in defense, of course, because the people who are trying to shut that down are quite successful with tarnishing 'help' as a bad thing).
I have to agree with @Sunny on that definition of white knighting.
Sticking up for what's right is fine. It's good. People should do it more. They're often afraid to because in their social circles they might find themselves suddenly on the outside and treated poorly.
White knighting, more often than not, is done:
A) for the wrong reasons. The 'knight' just wants that benefit ('hey I stood up for you now you need to fuck me')
B) they only speak up when it's easy ('how dare you tell her star wars is better than star trek!' while ignoring the -isms going on in another thread)
A white knight also usually picks one (or maybe a couple) person to defend...In pursuit of item A above.
I only consider it white knighting when said 'knight' is stepping into some bullshit situation, trying to 'protect' someone (usually but not always a girl!) from a conflict or consequences that they likely created themselves, thereby looking like the Big Dicked Hero who was brave enough to take on The Big Mean.
Calling someone out on utterly unacceptable behavior regardless of who their target is? That's not white knighting. That's being a decent person that cares about community.
Too many words for behaviors that are not just acceptable but admirable have been turned into insults - deliberately so at times. White knight. Social justice warrior,. Liberal.
By making epithets out of behavior we should be seeing more often, people are discouraging the behavior we should ideally be seeing more of. 'I should say something but I don't want to be labeled a white knight'. Or an SJW. Or a person who gives a damn but doesn't want to be denigrated.
@Kestrel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
So, I don't care if this is considered virtue signalling, white knighting or white saviour.
Calling out racism isn't white-knighting; it's something to be done.
Virtue-signaling is a specific behavior to draw attention to one's moral character. For example, "I hate how the rich take advantage of the poor!" is a statement as to one's moral character, not as to how that exploitation is wrong. Another example, "I would never treat a person of <whatever ethnicity, race, religion, etc.> that way!"; like, thanks, no one asked you what you would do.
I think (the collective) we don't see as much genuine 'standing up for' (vs. the 'for status/reward' versions described) is... well, it's depressing, but true:
...people don't necessarily know or recognize it if they aren't in the group being targeted.
There have certainly been times I've been in the group that's being targeted and am oblivious, and I see a fair bit of this go around as well.
It is non-trivial if not actually impossible to stay on top of all of the creative, twisted, fucked up ways people express gross and horrifying bullshit, even among genuine allies -- as in, the people who absolutely would speak up for the right reasons if they recognized what's happening.
This is legitimately frustrating for all parties except the assholes, which is essentially the worst possible outcome for decent human beings and anyone simply trying to go about their life minding their own business unmolested by assholes.
I wish I knew what to suggest here, beyond 'grab someone you know who either is familiar with what gross is happening, or grab someone you know who isn't an asshole and be (frustratingly, I know, believe me, I really do) willing to provide a short-form (one-two sentence) summary of the thing. (ex: 'the word <slur> is a slur used to dehumanize <group>' should be more than enough for a genuine ally without a long-winded dissertation/extensive emotional labor required to clue them in.) It's a shitty solution, but it's the only one I've got. 
I think there is a blind singular focus aspect to white knighting vs speaking up too. This could apply to a singular individual person that should be rescued at all costs, regardless of their behavior. It could be rushing to do battle on behalf of a specific group without bothering to read the context of a specific discussion. I would say that the most frequent example of that would be when some woke non-category bystander person starts tone policing the people they are purporting to champion, and look as if they are more concerned with appearing like a defender including lecturing people in that group vs listening to what they have to say.
I think there are people who get off on doing those things, but I think usually (except for the specific individual attached people) it just means that they are not capable or willing to look at the broader perspective, and a lot of people who get labeled that frequently in my observation are usually quite stubborn and unable to really come up for air once they have sunk their teeth into something.
It is one thing to speak up/out, but it is another to do so while being blind to context. I think that is where people get into trouble, whether it is blindly defending someone who has a history of terrible behavior, or people who end up saying shit like "if you are mean to someone who used a slur then you are just as bad, and it's your fault if they become more racist/antisemitic/whathaveyou."
Usually I think white knighting/virtue signaling is speaking more to the self-centered or self-promotional appearance of that person's behavior than it is about the fact that they spoke up at all. Sometimes people throw that out there to try to shut someone speaking up down, but I think usually it's worth it to slow down, reread or regroup, and see if there's something that was missed in the broader context that got trampled over in the rush to come out swinging as to why people are left with that impression.
I think that, for all the fine lines we might want to put around what is or isn't "white knighting," it's gone the same way as "virtue signaling" and "SJW" in that it's now just a way for the Tyches of the world to attack anyone left of Mussolini as fake.
@insomniac7809 said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I think that, for all the fine lines we might want to put around what is or isn't "white knighting," it's gone the same way as "virtue signaling" and "SJW" in that it's now just a way for the Tyches of the world to attack anyone left of Mussolini as fake.
So long as we understand what normal people consider to be an acceptable definition, why does it matter that unreasonable people will attempt to subvert its meaning?
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
why does it matter that unreasonable people will attempt to subvert its meaning?
Because reasonable people aren't usually the ones we're arguing against.
Not including legal or academic arguments. We argue with anyone at any time.
@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
So long as we understand what normal people consider to be an acceptable definition, why does it matter that unreasonable people will attempt to subvert its meaning?
Because the normal people, when they go, 'huh? why is <thing> bad?' will get told by the assholes or poor ol' google spewing out the endless repetitions of the assholes' meaning.
Oh fucking well.
@surreality Agreed. The fight for education isn't just a fight against ignorance, it also fights against malicious and negligent miseducation.
There is such a thing as too far left, I found out today. I got banned from r/AgainstHateSubreddits for suggesting that all catholics aren't hatemongers. Not fighting. Not screaming. Just not moving lock-step with folks on the very, very fringe of the left. Those folks are... everything the right accuses them of. They've gone off the deep end. Witch hunts. Which is ironic, I know. Considering catholics are their target now.
So there is such a thing as too much 'SJWing' and 'White Knighting'.
@Admiral All groups have tribal mentalities, with the fringes ironically being more insular and tribal than the core.
Though I'm profoundly against the idea that being on the "left" equals "correct." Especially when comparing the western European idea of the 'left' to the American one.
It's definitely a thing that if you go 'too far' in a certain direction, you get to a scary place.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
It's definitely a thing that if you go 'too far' in a certain direction, you get to a scary place.
It's the same with everything. Too much of anything and it ends in death. Too much oxygen, too much water...
@surreality said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Because the normal people, when they go, 'huh? why is <thing> bad?' will get told by the assholes or poor ol' google spewing out the endless repetitions of the assholes' meaning.
That's not what I meant to communicate, so let me restate.
Why should I be concerned that a bunch of idiots are misusing a term when I decide to use such term in an accurate, acceptable way? By that reasoning, I should stop using words like "patriot" and "Republican."
As for far-left extremists, they aren't the ones holding up "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" signs at protests. Still, being Catholic is a little tougher than usual these days in my chosen circles. Telling people that screaming at a group isn't going to make them change, but people still believe that protesting will make a greater difference than strategic political planning, so what the fuck can I say.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
So long as we understand what normal people consider to be an acceptable definition, why does it matter that unreasonable people will attempt to subvert its meaning?
I'm not convinced that we do know what normal people consider to be an acceptable definition. Language is use; no matter how snooty I am about how everybody but me is using "begs the question" wrong, it doesn't actually matter in terms of communicating.
So if "white knighting" keeps getting used to mean "anyone objecting to discrimination against subaltern groups they aren't in," and that's what it's understood to mean, that's what it means.
Maybe I'm wrong and it hasn't gotten to that point. I'm skeptical.
@Ganymede I don't disagree with this. I say the same myself often in regard to a lot of terminology.
Hell, we even have a community-specific definition of 'white knighting' in the hobby, and there's an even more nuanced one I recall that was on Shang (and presumably other, similar sites).
I'm not surprised if I use a term that has been co-opted and people make assumptions, even though I know those assumptions are inaccurate and I'm probably going to have to correct them. Depending on context and other things, that assumption is going to be more or less idiotic, and really, people shouldn't be doing that.
The tl;dr is: it isn't safe to assume which definition is in play, but so many people do based on tribalist thinking (in any given direction) that it's necessary to prepare the helmet and the explanation because these people attack first, justify second, blame-shift third, and think last if at all.
@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
why does it matter that unreasonable people will attempt to subvert its meaning?
Because reasonable people aren't usually the ones we're arguing against.
Not including legal or academic arguments. We argue with anyone at any time.
