Hi , n00b here.

My name is Pendaric. Some of you may know me from Secular Cafe.

I've been lurking at A+ for the past week.

Social justice is an area I'm interested in learning about. I don't speak the lanquage, and the concepts are new to me. I didn't want to sign up at A+ because of the obvious hostility to anybody who was at all a noob - they made it clear that they expected you to have a good deal of experience and knowledge.

Nonetheless, by lurking I've encountered the concepts of privilege, and Schodringer's Rapist, both of which I haven't come across before. They make sense to me, and to the extent of getting that new knowledge I'm grateful to them. But I think I'll go somewhere that isn't going to rip my face off for accidentally putting my foot in it in order to acquire more knowledge.

I'm hoping that place is here. I'm quite possibly going to accidentally offend people several times until I'm more up to speed, if the postings at A+ are any kind of guide at all. Please accept my apologies in advance if that happens - I can assure you that my intentions are good, even if the road to hell is paved with them...

So - where do I start in learning about this? What are the basic concepts that I really have to have a handle on?

Howdy Pendaric -

Welcome and feel free to chew over the ideas. You won't offend anyone here, so there's no need for best behaviour.

At the moment, this is a fairly new forum, and you will certainly find people who are knowledgeable about and enthusiastic for progressive politics. On the whole, though, I have to say that you might struggle to get a definitive handle on 'social justice' here as not everyone here has even bought into it as a useful concept, and even its most enthusiastic proponents tend to give either a vague definition or one which varies from someone else's.

We seem to get the odd poster coming over from the 'blue' to slum it with us for a while, and you should be able to identify them and maybe decide whether you broadly agree with them which might be a start.

So, with the disclaimer that we can't guarantee a primer, and we definitely can't guarantee that we can train you such that you won't get told off if you ever venture into the other place (even the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Mr. Miagi working together couldn't accomplish that), please feel welcome to join in. We can guarantee you a voice.

hello!